Could you explain what is the difference between Facebook.com / referral and Facebook / social in Google Analytics report?
And same question with Twitter and LinkedIn. E.g. linkedin.com / referral or lnkd.in / referral (these are shared blog posts) and linkedin / social. I found this data in Acquisition/ All Traffic/ Source-Medium page of GA.
My theory, is that referral is from link on brand page or ads, while social - is from messaging app? What is logic with LinkedIn and Twitter?
Thank you!
At least for LinkedIn, an untagged link in LinkedIn will show up as "linkedin.com / referral" as the source / medium, but in the Acquisitions / All Traffic / Channels report, that same visit will be "Social" in the Default Channel Grouping, and "LinkedIn" under Social Network.
This seems very strange to me, but I've verified it by going to an obscure old page on my website and looking at how GA reports it.
H/T to Annie Cushing at annielytics.com, whose blog post on channel groupings led me in the right direction. Because of this discrepancy, she recommends using the Default Channel Grouping.
