Why lumping all your search traffic together is making your data useless
Original: “Paid Search” & “Organic Search” are useless Marketing Channels
Lukas Oldenburg
June 2, 2025
10 min read
Opinion
Intermediate
Summary
This article explores why the common marketing channel groupings of 'Paid Search' and 'Organic Search' are too broad and undifferentiated to provide meaningful insights. It delves into the importance of splitting these channels into more granular segments to better understand their unique performance and contribution to the business.
Who This Is For
Marketing Analysts
Performance Marketers
Marketing Managers
Key Takeaways
- Split 'Paid Search' into Brand, Shopping, and Non-Brand channels for meaningful insights
- Brand keyword campaigns have dramatically different performance (often 20x cheaper CPC) than other paid search
- Use manual UTM tagging instead of relying solely on gclid parameters for accurate tracking
- Separating organic search by intent and keyword types reveals hidden performance patterns
- Granular channel segmentation prevents high-performing segments from masking poor performers
Tools & Technologies
Google Analytics Adobe Analytics Piwik Pro Amplitude Google Ads Bing Ads UTM parameters gclid tracking
Topics Covered
marketing-channels search-engine-optimization paid-advertising business-strategy
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