# Paid, Organic, and Unknown Sources

> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://ghost.supermanservices.ca/llms.txt).

What each bucket contains, and why unknown is not a failure.

Section: Attribution Explained. Web version: https://ghost.supermanservices.ca/help/paid-organic-and-unknown

## Paid
An enquiry Ghost can tie to advertising you paid for. These are the only enquiries that belong in a return-on-ad-spend calculation, which is why Ghost is careful about what it puts here.

## Organic
An enquiry from a source you did not pay for in this period — a search result, a map listing, a referral, a returning customer. Real, valuable, and not part of ad spend.

## Unknown
Ghost has the enquiry but no evidence of where it came from. The enquiry is counted everywhere it should be counted; only its source is missing.

## Why unknown matters for your numbers
Unknown enquiries are excluded from paid performance, so a large unknown bucket makes advertising look worse than it is. That is the honest direction to be wrong in — crediting ads with enquiries they may not have produced would overstate the thing you are using to decide a budget.

The way to shrink it is better source information, not a different rule. Start with [Review Tracking](https://ghost.supermanservices.ca/help/review-tracking).