HubSpot Knowledge Base

Understand Original and Latest source properties

Written by Public API | Nov 4, 2022 5:40:02 PM

Source properties tell you where your contacts come from, including how they came to visit your website, or how they were created or updated via offline sources.

The Original source property tells you the first known source through which a contact interacted with your business. The Latest 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.

A contact’s Original source or Latest source value will be one of the following:

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

Learn more about how the source categories are defined.

Understand source drill-down properties

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

Please note: the drill-down properties are automatically set by HubSpot and cannot be updated manually. If you change a contact’s original or latest source, the drill-down properties will be cleared.

  • Source drill-down 1: The 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., Twitter, Facebook), Import if the contact was created through an imported file, or the name of a marketing campaign.
  • Source drill-down 2: The 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, the name of an import file, or the name of a marketing email.

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

  • If you create a contact via an import, the source property values will be:
    • Original source: Offline sources
    • Original source drill-down 1: Import
    • Original source drill-down 2: the name or ID number of the import file.

  • If a contact’s most recent visit to your website came from a Facebook ad, the source property values will be:
    • Latest source: Paid social
    • Latest source drill-down 1: Facebook
    • Latest source drill-down 2: the name of the Facebook ad campaign.

Please note: older HubSpot accounts may have the properties Original source data 1 and Original source data 2 instead, which contain the same information.

The following table shows the Original source or Latest source values and the possible Source drill-down values included in each category:

Original or Latest source Original or Latest source drill-down 1 Original or Latest source drill-down 2
Organic search Search term (if available) Search engine site
Referrals Referring website domain Referring website URL
Organic social Social media site Campaign name retrieved from the URL's utm_campaign parameter
Email marketing Campaign name retrieved from the URL's utm_campaign parameter HubSpot email name
Paid search Campaign name retrieved from the URL's utm_campaign parameter Search term (if available)
Paid social Social media site Campaign name retrieved from the URL's utm_campaign parameter
Direct traffic Entrance URL N/A
Other campaigns Campaign name retrieved from the URL's utm_campaign parameter Source / Medium
Offline sources Offline channel/tool/platform. Examples include:
IMPORT, SALES,
API, BATCH_UPDATE, CRM_UI, MOBILE_IOS, SALESFORCE, BOT, MEETING, EXTENSION, PRESENTATIONS		 Specific offline medium
(e.g., BCC_TO_CRM, business-card-scanner, salesforce-createdby, addMessageUser, addViewer)

Please note: if a contact uses an ad-blocker, it may block HubSpot's tracking cookies. As a result, a contact's Original or Latest source value can be Offline sources, even if they originated from a web source. For example, a contact whose first interaction was a chat on your website could have an Offline sources value if the tracking cookies were blocked.

The Original or Latest source value Offline sources consists of several possible offline interactions, which the drill-down properties help to explain. If a contact’s Original or Latest source value is Offline sources, below are common drill-down property values and what they mean. The following are common offline drill-down 1 values:

  • Analytics: the contact was created or updated when a third-party form is used on an external page. This usually occurs when a custom event is triggered using the events tool (Enterprise only), or when the visitor fills in a third party form on a Wordpress page with the HubSpot tracking code or the HubSpot Wordpress plugin installed.
  • API > contacts-upsert: the contact was created or updated directly using HubSpot's Contacts API.
  • CRM_UI or CONTACTS: the contact was manually added to the CRM by a user.
  • Form > [form ID]: the contact was created or updated by a form submission from a filters IP address.
  • Extension: the contact was created or updated via a logged email sent using the HubSpot Sales extension.
  • Import: the contact was imported into HubSpot.
  • Integration: the contact was created or updated via a third-party software that you have integrated with HubSpot. Keep in mind that some integrations will appear under API key depending on what information is being passed into HubSpot.
  • Marketplace: the contact was created or updated by the HubSpot Marketplace.
  • Presentations: the contact was created or updated via the documents tool.
  • Sales: the contact was created or updated manually within the HubSpot Sales extension sidebar.
  • Salesforce: the contact was imported from Salesforce or created in Salesforce then automatically created in HubSpot.

The following are common offline drill-down 2 values:

If the Original or Latest source drill-down 2 property has an internal value, indicated by an info information icon, you should use the internal value when filtering contacts by their source drill-down properties.
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