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Source/medium recording differently in tools
Posted by on February 11, 2026 at 5:34 pmHelp needed!
We have two separate tools: Leadfeeder (which records session data from businesses) and WhatConverts (a lead management tool).
Both show different source/medium data for leads and I’m wondering why this is occurring. Leadfeeder is showing a lot more sessions recently as Direct, WhatConverts is showing usually something different to that (e.g., google/cpc).
I suspect something is amiss with the scripts in Google Tag Manager – something causing them to misfire causing the attributions to be wrong.
The odd time, leads don’t get captured in WhatConverts too – just to add to things, which raises my suspicion also.
How would you approach this to be able to get things fixed?
Thanks in advance!
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1 Reply
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Stuff like this tend to happen as tools have different attribution towards conversions.
One tools probably uses last click, other is data driven, the third one is some mixed model and so on.
Other then that if you checked tracking in both tools and its setup the correct way and tracking on testing then its def attribution related.
Also dunno if you are from EU. Check if everything is set correctly in your cookie tool when it comes to accepting or declining cookies.
Hope this helps.
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yeah this is pretty common and it’s usually not gtm misfiring, it’s just different attribution logic.
leadfeeder is session-based, so it’ll label a lot as direct if it can’t see referrer or utms, or if the user comes back later via a clean direct visit. whatconverts is lead-based and will often keep the original source in cookies, so it can still show google/cpc even when the last click looks like direct.
the usual culprits are utms getting dropped after the first page, redirects, internal links, cross-domain or subdomain hops, in-app browsers on ios, consent banner blocking, or the form submit happening on a different url where the params aren’t present. the missing leads in whatconverts usually means the trigger is flaky too, like ajax forms, thank you page not loading, or the script getting blocked.
quick way to debug is by doing a tagged test click, navigate a couple pages, then submit on desktop and iphone. watch when utms disappear and whether whatconverts fires.
fix is usually persist utm + gclid in a first-party cookie, write them into hidden fields on the form, and trigger whatconverts on actual submit, not just pageviews.
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Did you test fire in GTM Preview and GA4 Debug. That prevents this exact scenario.
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Do you know what the attribution model is for both of these tools?
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Your lead feeder thing might be looking for a different url parameter syntax than what converts is.
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