URL Rules

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 – All URL Rules

How To Create a Simple Rule – Written Guide

Go to your URL rule settings and click “Add new rule”

Add a Tag

Most commonly you will want to add a @source tag if you are trying to track a source

Adjust the words to Match

This needs to match exactly with what will be in the URL

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:

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:

Dynamic Rule – Written Guide

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.

Go to to “Tracking” and then “URL Rules” in your Hyros account.

Click “Add new rule”.

Click “Dynamic Rule”

Click the “URL Rule Name” field and name it whatever makes sense to you

Click the “URL parameter” field. Using the standards UTM’s you have already setup, you can add the parameter you want to use to track a source. For example, the most common case for emails would be to type “utm_campaign” and click enter.

Select the Tag type you want to generate. In the example of emails we want to generate a source.

OPTIONAL STEP – Click “Advanced Settings”.

You will see by default under the “Dynamic Source Traffic Parameter” we are using utm_source. This means when we first create a brand new source using this rule, if the utm_source exists in the same click we will use this to organize this source into a traffic source automatically.

You can do exactly the same in the “Dynamic Source Category Parameter” to automatically configure the category of any newly created sources using this rule, although this is not necessary.

Click “Create rule”.

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.

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

This is a great option if you have UTMs or parameters in your URL that can be used to identify a specific lead stage.

You can create a dynamic URL to track specific custom stages of a lead’s journey by following thse steps:

1. Go to your URL rules settings and click create a new rule.
2. Name it whatever makes sense to you.
3. Rule type should be set to Dynamic.
4. 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 is lead_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.
5. Select the action type of “Lead Stage”.
6. Apply rule to the “Tracked URL”.

Any questions or doubts at all about any of this guide, please reach out the support team.