Google / cpc not showing in sources

[MAGGyver]

Hi everyone,

(I’m new to Piwik)

I’ve been running into an issue with Piwik Pro Core’s channel attribution that I’d like to get your thoughts on.

Setup status:

• Piwik Pro Core has been running for several days
• Google Ads account is properly connected (verified through Reports > Google Ads showing metrics)
• Auto-tagging is enabled in Google Ads
• Campaigns are running and generating clicks

The issue: In my source list, I can only see:

• google / organic
• direct / direct
• bing / organic

What’s missing is google / cpc, despite having active ad campaigns with verified clicks.

Has anyone encountered something similar? I feel like I might be overlooking something obvious here, but I’ve gone through the standard troubleshooting steps.

If you’ve dealt with this before, I’d really appreciate your insights on what else I should check.

Thanks!
Martin

[Oliwer_Kaczmarek]

Hi Martin,

Could you please check if the Gclid dimension have any values or if it’s empty?

Best,
Oliwer

[MAGGyver]

Hi Oliwer,

thank you very much for your response.

I did already check den Gclid Dimension to see if the CPC-Traffic is attributed to a different Channel. But the data is also missing:

Best regards
Martin

[MAGGyver]

Maybe I found something, after reading your message.

The Landingpages in Ads are with www. - but the Website is configured as non-www with a redirect.

Maybe the Gclid-Parameter gets lost through this redirection?

I updated the Text-Ads and will look again on my reports on Monday.

Another Follow-Up Question:
In my Ads-Extended-Landingpages Report (in Google Ads) I also see many pages with “?gbraid”-Parameter instead of an “?gclid”-Parameter
Will Piwik be able to recognize this also as cpc?

[M.Idziak]

Hi Martin,

The redirect will likely be the cause. It is actually mentioned in Google’s documentation:

“If your website contains redirects, it’s important that you preserve the gclid URL parameter in your redirect. Google Analytics and gtag.js tags expect to observe the gclid parameter as a top-level parameter on the page where tags are loaded.” A similar situation occurs with Piwik PRO.

You can check that in the tracker debugger as well, instead of waiting for the session to appear in Analytics reports.

You could try adding a fake GCLID to the URL and then observe the behavior in the Tracker Debugger: Go to Analytics > Settings > Tracker debugger.

As for gbraid parameters, Piwik PRO does not automatically recognize these. You could create a custom dimension to capture them, but that would not automatically assign the traffic with those parameters to campaign traffic (google/cpc).

That said, the better approach would be to rely on UTMs, which can be automatically added via Google Ads. I’m not sure if you are using these, but if you are, they are likely being stripped at the level of the redirect. Therefore, you would need to ensure that the GCLID, as well as UTMs, are preserved during redirects.

Lastly, I would recommend using GCLID (auto-tagging) AND UTMs at the same time
Why?
GCLID is necessary for the Piwik PRO - Google Ads integration reports.
Also, having only GCLID (without the UTMs) we will not be able to provide the full context of the ad that is provided by the UTMs. All you will see is (under below dimensions)

• Campaign name: google ads unknown
• source: google
• medium: cpc

I hope it makes sense.

Best,
Michal

[MAGGyver]

Hi Michal,

thanks a lot for your post - it really helped to understand the context and find a better setup.
Additionally: After updating the final URLs in Google Ads as mentioned before (without any redirects), the tracking works much better now.

Following your recommendation, I’ve set these account level settings:

• Automatic tagging: Yes
• Tracking template: {lpurl}?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}&utm_adgroup={adgroupid}&utm_device={device}&utm_matchtype={matchtype}&utm_adposition={adposition}

Two quick questions: Is it really beneficial to set all these UTM parameters if they’re not directly evaluated in Piwik? I suspect it just adds clutter to the URLs since the parameters aren’t removed by default - is that correct?

Regarding gbraid - without a custom dimension, it will still be mapped through the UTM parameters as CPC, right? Is there any tracking advantage in creating the custom dimension, or is it just to see how often gbraid is set?

The helpful community here confirms my decision to replace GA4 with Piwik Pro across all my projects. Thank you very much for your patience.

Best regards
Martin

[M.Idziak]

Let me take your questions one by one

Is it really beneficial to set all these UTM parameters if they’re not directly evaluated in Piwik? I suspect it just adds clutter to the URLs since the parameters aren’t removed by default - is that correct?
Yes, as far as Piwik PRO data goes, they are crucial. Only then are you able to see the full context of your campaigns in PP. They are not so important for the Google Ads system (as far as I’m concerned).

As for the clutter?
UTMs are automatically removed from the URL, so there should be no clutter. Moreover, if there are any other parameters (other than UTMs) that you may or may not want to see in the reports, there are 2 ways of dealing with them:
1 use page path or page domain and path extraction in custom reports - it strips the URL of all parameters etc. for a given report (ideal for when in some cases you would want to keep them).

2 remove them altogether by adding the parameter on the ‘property’ level (‘Site & app’ level). In PP go to Administration > 'Sites & apps > select site & app > ‘Data collection’ tab > ‘Page URLs’ section > ‘Remove parameters from page URLs’ … and then add the parameter that you want to get rid of completely from URLs in reports, for a given ‘Site & app’

---

Regarding gbraid - without a custom dimension, it will still be mapped through the UTM parameters as CPC, right?

Yes, we will use UTMs to map the campaign info (that is why they are crucial). GCLID and GBRAID could be crucial if you want to upload offline conversions to Google Ads - you could export that data from PP and then upload it to Google Ads (see this video for more info - note that the video is for CDP, which will soon be launched for all accounts, including free Piwik PRO account). You can also upload offline conversions manually using this method.
Now, as far as I know, the support from Google on GBRAID is limited i.e. not all conversions upload methods are available, but I don’t know much more details.

Is there any tracking advantage in creating the custom dimension, or is it just to see how often gbraid is set?
Tracking advantage - no, other than to see how much of GBRAID traffic you have or, as you said, to see how often GBRAID is set. However, it might be crucial for conversion uploads - if you happen to upload offline conversions to Google Ads AND if you think you have a significant number of iOS web-to-app conversions.

The helpful community here confirms my decision to replace GA4 with Piwik Pro across all my projects. Thank you very much for your patience.
That is very kind of you to say

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Best,

Michal