Paid or organic: how to tell where your website's customers came from

Your client wants to know if the ads are bringing contacts or if the traffic came on its own. Three simple signals carried by every click are enough to tell them apart.

When a business owner asks "are the ads working?", they really want to know something else: how many people messaged on WhatsApp, called or filled in the form because of the ad. To answer, you need to separate paid visits from organic ones.

The three signals that identify the source

Click identifier: Google Ads adds gclid to the URL and Meta adds fbclid. With gclid, the visit came from a Google ad.
UTM tags: utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign that you add to the ad link. utm_medium=cpc or paid means paid traffic.
Referring page: google.com without gclid is organic search; instagram.com without a paid tag is organic social.

Be careful with fbclid

Meta also adds fbclid to organic links (a shared post, a link in bio). So fbclid alone does not prove an ad. The safe way is to always use UTM on Meta ads, with utm_medium=paid.

Count contacts, not just visits

Visits do not pay your client's bills. What matters is the click on WhatsApp, on the phone number, on "get directions" and the form submission. When each of these clicks is tied to the visit's source, you can show: "the ad brought 40 visits and 6 WhatsApp conversations".

How MyXet does it

A lightweight script on the client's website records the visit and the clicks on WhatsApp, phone and forms, classifies the source using the signals above and stores no IP address and no cookie. The manager sees paid × organic per client and sends the client a report with their own branding.