Are untracked Steam wishlists the same as organic wishlists?
On this page
No. “Untracked” describes a gap in attribution, not where a player discovered your game. An unpaid post can produce a tracked wishlist, while a paid campaign can influence a wishlist that never appears in its UTM report. In Coal, untracked wishlists are the remainder after subtracting recorded UTM wishlist counts from total additions, with negative remainders set to zero.
Organic and tracked answer different questions
For a campaign review, use organic to mean activity you did not pay to distribute, such as an unpaid social post. Define the term explicitly: teams also use it to mean discovery within Steam, which is a different distinction.
Tracked, in Coal's wishlist timeline, means Steam attributed the wishlist to a tagged link in the UTM data Coal received. A tag can be attached to either paid or unpaid activity.
Consider these illustrative journeys:
| Activity | Player journey | What the team can conclude |
|---|---|---|
| Unpaid social post | Player follows its tagged link and makes an eligible wishlist addition | Organic activity can have recorded attribution |
| Paid advertisement | Player sees the ad, later searches for the game separately and wishlists it | The ad may have influenced the action without a recorded link to it |
| Recommendation from a friend | Player finds the game and wishlists it | An addition alone does not reveal that recommendation |
These are possible journeys, not a measured breakdown of your audience. You cannot identify them by subtracting two totals.
What the remainder tells you
Suppose Your Game receives these results on one day. All numbers in this example are fictional.
| Measure | Wishlists |
|---|---|
| Total additions | 100 |
| UTM-attributed wishlist count | 25 |
| Remainder | 75 |
You can report that the UTM count accounts for 25 of the day's 100 additions numerically. You cannot conclude that paid marketing generated 25 and organic discovery generated 75. The UTM count may include unpaid posts, and the remainder may include responses to paid activity.
The same limitation applies when reviewing a spike. If a creator posts a video on that day, the 75-wishlist remainder is not automatically the video's contribution. Other activity and existing demand may have contributed too.
Why attribution can be missing
Steam's conversion reporting depends on an eligible tracked visit. Browser and cookie choices can prevent tracking, and some journeys cannot be connected across browsers. Valve also documents a 72-hour conversion window and says conversion totals finalize four days after the visit. Recent results can therefore still change. These are documented reporting limits, not evidence that a particular missing wishlist came from your campaign. Valve: UTM Analytics.
What to do in your next campaign review
Use the remainder to guide an investigation:
- Check completeness. Compare the same dates and inspect whether recent reports are still updating.
- Separate recorded sources. Identify which UTM rows belong to paid campaigns and which belong to unpaid activity.
- Put activity beside outcomes. Record posts, ads, creator coverage, demo releases and festivals that overlap the period.
- Write down the uncertainty. Distinguish what the report attributes from what timing merely suggests.
A useful review note might read: “The video coincided with higher additions, but a paid campaign ran during the same period. We cannot isolate the video's contribution from these reports. For the next video, we'll use a distinct tagged link and record other activity in its response window.”
That gives the team a concrete next step without allocating unexplained wishlists to a convenient source. Even a recorded attribution does not establish that the player would never have wishlisted without that activity.
How Coal helps
Coal brings wishlist additions, recorded UTM outcomes and marketing events into the same investigation. The tracked/untracked split helps you see how much the available attribution explains numerically. It cannot identify the source of every remaining wishlist.
If a daily UTM count exceeds the total additions, Coal sets the remainder to zero. Treat that as a reconciliation issue to inspect, not proof that every addition has been explained. For example, 110 recorded UTM wishlists against 100 additions does not become a valid allocation simply because the remainder displays zero.