Understand Original and Latest traffic source properties

Traffic source properties tell you how contacts first and most recently came to interact with your business, such as visiting your website or a clicking a marketing campaign. There are also traffic source properties for companies and deals, which are based on associated contacts' source values.

The Original Traffic Source property tells you the first known source through which a contact interacted with your business. The Latest Traffic Source property shows the most recent known source. These properties are automatically set by HubSpot, but you can update the value on a contact record manually.

To understand how records were created in HubSpot, including methods other than online interactions, refer to the record source properties instead.

Traffic source values

A record's Original Traffic Source or Latest Traffic Source value will be one of the following:

• Organic search
• Paid search
• Email marketing
• Organic social
• Referrals
• Other campaigns
• Direct traffic
• Paid social

Learn more about how the source categories are defined.

Understand traffic source drill-down properties

There are two Original and Latest Traffic Source drill-down properties that tell you additional information about the source through which a contact interacted with your website.

The drill-down properties are automatically set by HubSpot and cannot be updated manually. If you change a record's traffic source, the drill-down properties will be cleared.

• Traffic source drill-down 1: The Traffic Source drill-down 1 property values provide context related to a contact’s source. Possible values include the name of the social media site the contact interacted on (e.g. Facebook) or the name of a marketing campaign.
• Traffic source drill-down 2: The Traffic Source drill-down 2 property value provides the most specific context related to a contact’s source. This value is typically the exact name or ID of the specific piece of content from which the contact originated, such as a website URL or the name of a marketing email.

While the Original Traffic Source and Latest Traffic Source properties give a broad category for the source, each respective drill-down property provides more specific information depending on the Original or Latest Traffic Source value.

For example, if a contact’s most recent visit to your website came from a Facebook ad, the source property values will be:

• Latest Traffic Source: Paid social
• Latest Traffic Source Drill-Down 1: Facebook
• Latest Traffic Source Drill-Down 2: the name of the Facebook ad campaign.
• Latest Traffic Source Date: the date of the interaction.

The following table shows the Original Traffic Source or Latest Traffic Source values and the possible Traffic Source Drill-Down values included in each category:

Please note: if a contact uses an ad-blocker, it may block HubSpot's tracking cookies and affect their values for traffic source properties.

Record source properties

While traffic source properties tell you how contacts and their associated companies and deals first or recently interacted with your business, the Record Source property tells you how records were created in your HubSpot account. This applies to all objects and includes creation methods beyond traffic interactions, such as import, the HubSpot mobile app, or integrations.

Refer to the following articles to learn more about the record source properties:

• Understand Record Source and Record Source Detail properties
• Review the Record Source values

Please note: if you've previously used the Original and Latest Traffic Source value Offline sources to track other ways contacts were created or updated, it's recommended to use the Record Source property instead to better drill down into how records of all objects were created.