How to find PostEngine-generated traffic in your Google Analytics
In this article
Finding Traffic from PostEngine - Universal Analytics
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a tool that tracks and reports on website traffic. If your property website is set up for Google Analytics, your team can find valuable insight on visitors coming to your site from different sources like Google searches, social media, and most importantly Craigslist ads.
If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics, or you’re not sure if your website uses it, please reach out to your marketing team.
Each time a user visits your property website using the link placed in your ads, PostEngine automatically includes UTM codes so we can track your ads’ performance. UTM codes are small snippets added onto a website URL that tell your Google Analytics about where users came from and how they got there.
Here’s an example of our standard UTM codes:
www.yourpropertywebsite.com/?utm_source=craigslist&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=postengine
Google announced that Universal Analytics (UA), their current standard, is being replaced by Google Analytics 4 (GA4). If you created your property before October 14, 2020, you're likely using a Universal Analytics property. If you created your property after October 14, 2020, you're likely using a Google Analytics 4 property already.
Finding Traffic from PostEngine - Universal Analytics
On July 1, 2023, new data will no longer flow into UA properties. This change means you need to set up GA4 for your property websites to continue seeing new data.
By default, we add UTM codes for each website visitor based on their source (Craigslist), the medium by which they were sent to your site (via referral), and then we give the visit a campaign name so you know it’s from us (PostEngine).
If you want to find this information in your Google Analytics, check out the following reports:
Reports > Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium
Reports > Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns
Universal Analytics defaults to showing reports for the past week, not including today. If you wish to look at a different timespan, use the date picker in the top right-hand corner and customize your date range.
Finding Traffic from PostEngine - Google Analytics 4
By default, we add UTM codes for each website visitor based on their source (Craigslist), the medium by which they were sent to your site (via referral), and then we give the visit a campaign name so you know it’s from us (PostEngine).
If you want to find this information in your Google Analytics 4, check out the following reports:
Reports → Life Cycle → Acquisition → User acquisition and set your search to “First user source / medium”
Reports → Life Cycle → Acquisition → User Acquisition and set your search to “First user campaign”
Google Analytics 4 defaults to showing reports for the past 28 days, not including today. If you wish to look at a different timespan, use the date picker in the top right-hand corner and customize your date range.
Troubleshooting
I can’t access Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a tool used mostly by marketing teams to track performance, so depending on your role you may or may not have access.
I want to customize my property’s tracking parameters.
Sure! We can customize tracking parameters like UTM codes, or add other ones if you wish. Contact us at help@rooof.com
I am using Universal Analytics, how do I set up Google Analytics 4?
We recommend reviewing Google’s support documentation to learn how to add GA4 to your existing Analytics account here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9744165?hl=en&ref_topic=9303319&sjid=4061241173298919369-NA#zippy=%2Cin-this-article.