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Why are some of my Meta ad visits under Other on the Website page?

The Website page sorts each visit by the source in its ad link, so Meta ads with an unusual source can land under Other.

How visits are sorted

Open Website and choose Traffic quality. With Source selected, the Which traffic is worth paying for table puts each visit under one source and lists its campaigns underneath. The visits come from Google Analytics.

A visit counts as Meta Ads when one of these is true:

  • The source in your ad link (utm_source) is facebook, instagram or meta, and the link also has a campaign (utm_campaign) or a paid medium such as paid or cpc (utm_medium).
  • The source is fb, ig, an, msg or th (Threads), the values Meta fills in for you. The one exception is Instagram's own tag on bio link clicks (ig with social), which counts as Instagram organic.
  • Its campaign name is a campaign in the Meta ad account connected to your store, and its medium is paid or empty.
  • Its source is the id of a campaign in that ad account. This also covers campaigns you renamed after the visit.

A visit from Facebook with no ad tags shows as Facebook organic, one from Instagram, including Instagram's product tags (IGShopping), as Instagram organic, and one from Threads as Threads organic. This includes clicks on Meta ads that have no tags, so tag your ads to keep them under Meta Ads. A source that matches no platform shows as Other (Smaller sources).

Visits from ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and other AI tools show as AI platforms. Paid clicks on those sites count as the company that sold the ad: Microsoft Shopping ads inside Copilot as Bing Ads, ChatGPT ads as OpenAI Ads, Gemini ads as Google Ads and Meta AI ads as Meta Ads. Paid clicks on Perplexity, Claude, DeepSeek and Grok stay under Other, because the page has no row for their ads. Google Ads Performance Max visits that Google Analytics can't name count as Google Ads.

Other also holds visits where Google Analytics recorded no source at all. On some stores that is most of Other. It comes from how Google Analytics is set up on the store, and the Website page can't tell where those visits came from.

What Meta's servers are

Meta opens the links in your ads and catalog from its own servers to check them. Those visits show as Meta's servers ("Meta checking your links, not shoppers"), so they don't make Meta Ads or Facebook organic look worse. They are left out of every other row, device, browser and landing page on the page. Your total visits and the country list still count them, because Google Analytics does.

Why a Meta campaign can still show under Other

  • The campaign was deleted in Meta, so it is no longer in your ad account.
  • Your store has no Meta ad account connected, or the connection stopped working.
  • The campaign is in a Meta ad account you have not chosen for this store.

Make every Meta ad land under Meta Ads

  1. In Meta Ads Manager, open the URL parameters of your ads.
  2. Set utm_source=facebook and keep your other parameters as they are, including utm_campaign.
  3. Publish the change. New visits from those ads show under Meta Ads.

Good to know

  • Each visit is counted once. When visits move from Other to Meta Ads, the Meta Ads totals and rates change with them.
  • The Traffic Sources card on the dashboard sorts visits the same way, except that it does not match campaigns from your Meta ad account. Your dashboard's sales and orders come from TrueROAS tracking, so they do not change.
  • Everyone on the store sees the same sorting.
  • You can't move a visit to another source yourself on this page.