Channel
The category of traffic source — organic search, paid, social, email, direct, referral.
What it means
Channel groups your traffic sources into a handful of standard categories — organic search, paid search, social, email, direct, referral — so you can compare broad categories instead of hundreds of individual sources.
Why it matters
Channel-level reporting is usually the right altitude for a first look at where your traffic and conversions are coming from, before drilling into a specific campaign or page.
ask datanephew
Which channel should I be paying most attention to?
Ask datanephew to break down traffic and conversions by channel together — the channel with the most visits is not always the one converting best.
Why does some of my traffic show up as 'direct' when I know it came from somewhere?
That usually happens when a link source information gets stripped — ask datanephew if the timing of a direct-traffic spike lines up with a specific campaign, which is often the missing tag.