URL rules are an easy create way to create sources, sales or action tags passively if the visiting URLs have distinct words or snippets in the URL.
WARNING: If you’re tracking link clicks sending traffic to your landing page, the best option is to track via THIS GUIDE. This allows you to track more granularly and will provide the most accurate data possible. URL rules are best utilized when you don’t have control over source links. If you have any questions please contact in-app support or the onboarding team.
How URL Rules Work for Source Tracking
When URL rules are set HYROS will watch the URL that people visit from. Many times our users already have UTMs on these URL or they have distinct text in them.
For example organic searches will normally include the name of the search engine used in the URL (Google, MSN; Yahoo, Bing, etc.).
Another example is if you already have set up UTM parameters on your ORGANIC traffic. For example, a visit from youtube may have ?utm_source=youtube in the URL of the visitor.
You can create a rule that will allow HYROS to spot these unique terms and if spotted attribute a source to the visitor. This allows you to easily plug large tracking gaps from organic and easy to miss sources.
Note that creating sources using a URL rule will create a source that is considered an “organic” source inside hyros by default.
Organic/email sources will take credit for the last clicks on many sales. This will make your ads look like they are not performing SINCE email sources will take all the credit. Mixing these traffic sources together can be messy.
We solve this by letting you filter out ads or organic sources when viewing reports. You can use this filter to view both, just email or just ads. This will give you a much clearer view of how organic traffic and ads are working on their own and together. By default reports are set to ignore organic sources so you can focus on your ad traffic.
How To Create a URL rule
Video Guide
How To Create a Simple Rule
Creating URL rules is easy. To do so just go TRACKING ->URL RULES. Then click “+ Add new rule”
Next, inside the tag field set the tag to something that will indicate the source, action or sale you would like to track. Make sure you use the correct tag type depending on what you would like to track, to read more about how are tags work please see the guide HERE.
After, adjust the name to whatever you like. For example, if you are using a URL rule to track youtube organic traffic, change the name to “Youtube” or “Youtube_Organic”.
Then analyze the text of visiting URLs you would like to track. For example, if you are sending traffic with a URL that looks like this “yoursite.com?utm_source=youtube” you will want to use the unique text “utm_source=youtube”.
Paste this text in the “Words to match” form. Here is an example:
Changing Tags
URL rules are not only used to create sources like the example above. You can change the tag that is applied to the lead to track anything. For example, if you wanted to apply an “!Optin” tag to the lead to signify that they came through a specific opt-in, you can just set the tag to “!option” and the words to match to the thank you page, or the page directly after the user opts in.
This will add an “!Optin1” tag to the lead each time they opt in via that specific page, then you can use this tag to filter inside your reports.
Use-Case Examples
Please see the dropdown below and follow the exact steps to track some of the more commonly found external sources:
Name = “Youtube_Organic”
Tag = “@youtube_organic”
Words to match = “youtube.”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “previous URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “google_search”
Tag = “@google_search”
Words to match = “google.”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “previous URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “google_shopping”
Tag = “@google_shopping”
Words to match = “utm_campaign=sag_organic”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “tracked URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “Attentive”
Rule Type = “Simple Rule”
Tag = “@attentive”
Words to match = “utm_source=attentive”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “tracked URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “Facebook_shop”
Tag = “@Facebook_shop”
Words to match = “utm_campaign=Facebook_UA”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “tracked URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “Bing_search”
Tag = “@bing_search”
Words to match = “bing.”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “previous URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “ecosia”
Tag = “@ecosia”
Words to match = “ecosia.”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “previous URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Name = “DuckDuckGo”
Tag = “@Duckduckgo”
Words to match = “Duckduckgo.”
Words to ignore = Empty
Apply rule to = “previous URL”
Advanced Settings = No changes
Tracked URL vs Previous URL
Tracked URL = A page that was tracked by our script.
Previous URL = The page/website that the user was on previously.
When searching through a user’s click journey, you will see both URLs as shown here:
In the above example, if you wanted to track the click from youtube you would need to set up the URL rule like this:
The dynamic rule is especially useful for Email and SMS campaigns, specifically when we want to track the source for each individual campaign separately.
Instead of creating a Simple Rule for each campaign we just need to create a Dynamic Rule which will automatically create a source for each campaign inside Hyros.
How To Create a Dynamic Rule
First, please make sure you are aware of how you have configured your own UTMs based on what you are intending to track. Your UTM tracking should be consistent and make sense to you.
Then follow these steps. This specific example is for the most common use case of tracking your campaigns (typically for email), but it can be adjusted for most types of tracking providing you are using consistent UTMs:
IMPORTANT: This should not be used as an alternative to ad tracking, for ads you should follow the guide for each specific ad platform to ensure we track your ads correctly, otherwise you will not be able to read your cost data correctly.
If the UTM exists on a source click that you have already setup tracking on with Hyros, the URL rule will be ignored.
How Does it Work?
URL Parameter field
For example, in the link below we can recognize the name of the campaign:
https://www.hyros.com?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-campaign-example-1
By assigning the URL parameter utm_campaign to the URL Parameter field, the dynamic rule will automatically create a source with this name(taken from the label in the URL):
@email-campaign-example-1
This means campaign tracking becomes automated, so if you have 100 campaigns with that same UTM then Hyros will create 100 sources, one for each of the campaigns, and will also attribute the right sources to your Leads.
Dynamic Traffic Source Parameter
For example, consider the same URL as above but we can focus on the utm_source:
https://www.hyros.com?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-campaign-example-1
By default we use the utm_source in the “Dynamic Source Traffic Parameter”, so the traffic source “Klaviyo” will be created automatically using the name associated with the parameter. We will then group any source created with this UTM present into that specific traffic source in your reports automatically
Dynamic Source Category Parameter
Works in the same way as the traffic source parameter, but when creating a new source it will automatically group the source into a source category for even deeper grouping.
By default this is off. It’s an optional step and should only be considered if you want more deeper grouping than just by traffic source.
You can read more about grouping sources into source categories and traffic sources HERE.
IMPORTANT PLEASE READ: A few Warnings regarding URL rules
BE VERY CAREFUL TO MONITOR THE RESULTS OF YOUR RULE. If your matched word is in unintended URLS it could attribute the source incorrectly. For example if you use the word “email” as your matched word then people visit a blog post with the URL blog.com/email-guide, all visitors to this guide will get tagged email. Make sure your rule is isolated to unique URLs and instances.
BEFORE SETTING UP A URL RULE FOR ORGANIC FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE OR GOOGLE ETC, please make 100% sure ad tracking is set up correctly first, otherwise, for example, if a youtube ad is not tracked correctly, the above URL rule will falsely track a Youtube organic click instead of a google ad click. For this reason, when possible it is always safer + more accurate to track via THIS GUIDE, and if that’s not possible, THEN creating a URL rule using the referrer URL will help to avoid this issue if there are specific UTM’s identifying the source (eg “utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=organic” clearly identifies an organic click).
How Will Sources Created by a URL Rule Look in Your Reports by default?
By default, all sources created via a URL rule will be given the traffic source “General”. They will also have a Category name “No Category” and Goal of “All”. This means inside a basic report you will see these sources under the traffic source “General” and Category “No Category” as shown below:
If you wish to edit these sources to different traffic sources, categories, or goals so you can better organize your data in a way that makes sense to you, you can do so following THIS GUIDE.
URL Rules for Lead Stage Tracking
You can create a dynamic URL to track specific custom stages of a lead’s journey by following thse steps:
- Go to your URL rules settings and click create a new rule.
- Name it whatever makes sense to you.
- Rule type should be set to Dynamic.
- Add the URL parameter that you will be using to determine a lead stage. This will use the value of that parameter to create a custom lead stage.
For example in the screenshot below the parameter used islead_stage, so if a lead landed on the page with the URL of “www.hyros.com?lead_stage=subscriptionactivated” we would assign the lead stage “subscription activated”.
Hyros will be using whatever comes after the=symbol of the parameter to create a lead stage.
The UTM parameter could be very different for your use case, please ensure you add your unique parameter that identifies the lead stage in the URL here. - Select the action type of “Lead Stage”.
- Apply rule to the “Tracked URL”.
Any questions or doubts at all about any of this guide, please reach out the support team.