Potential Reach
Potential reach shows, as you edit, how many visitors each journey would have matched over the last 30 days of your analytics data. Use it to catch a journey that is too broad or too narrow before you publish.
Potential reach requires the analytics service and must be enabled for your organization. When it is off, the Potential reach option does not appear and the editor shows no counts.
Opening the Panel
In the Journeys header, click Potential reach in the side panel switcher. The panel docks to the right of the editor. Click Potential reach again to close it. Whether the panel is open is remembered per Interaction.
The Assistant shares the same dock: opening one closes the other.
Reading the Panel
The header shows the total: N visitors · the last 30 days. Below it, a stacked bar divides those visitors among your journeys in order, with the remainder attributed to Everyone else. A status line reads Live · updates as you edit while counts are current and Recalculating… while a change is being counted; the numbers dim rather than disappear during recalculation.
Selected journey. Click a journey card in the builder, or a row in the panel, to select it. The card shows the journey's headline count and a subtitle such as 12.4K match · 3.1K claimed by earlier journeys, then a breakdown with a count for each group and each condition.
All journeys. One row per journey with its share of the bar and its count, followed by the Everyone else remainder.
What to fix. Advisories derived from the counts:
| Advisory | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Journey group n matches 95% or more of visitors | Journeys below it will almost never run. Narrow the group or move the journey down. |
| Journey can't be estimated — Attribute isn't in event data | The journey uses an attribute the analytics data does not carry (see below). |
The last journey is exempt from the "too broad" advisory, since nothing runs after it anyway.
Counts in the Editor
With the panel open, the builder annotates itself:
| Where | Annotation |
|---|---|
| Journey header | A pill reading N reachable with the journey's share of all visitors (for example 8.2% or 41%), or No estimate |
| Journey header | An amber Too broad pill when one of its groups matches 95% or more of visitors |
| Group header | N match, or a note explaining why the group cannot be estimated |
| Everyone else | N reachable — the visitors no journey claims |
How the Numbers Work
Visitors are devices. Each count is the number of distinct devices seen in the last 30 days that would have matched. A person who reads on a phone and a laptop counts twice.
Earlier journeys claim visitors first. A journey's headline number is its effective reach: the visitors it matches minus those already taken by journeys above it. The subtitle shows both the raw match and the claimed portion. If an earlier journey cannot be estimated, the overlap cannot be subtracted and the subtitle reads overlap with earlier journeys not counted.
Counts are historical. They describe visitors who were on your site in the window. A brand-new condition — a section that launches next week, a campaign that has not started — can match visitors this window never saw, so a low count is not always a mistake.
When There Is No Estimate
| Situation | What you see |
|---|---|
| A condition is still being written | Can't estimate this group yet. Finish its conditions and the estimate will fill in. |
| A condition uses an attribute not in event data | Can't estimate this group. Attribute isn't recorded in event data. It will still evaluate correctly at runtime. |
| A cohort condition is matches none of | Reach isn't counted for "matches none of" cohort conditions. |
| The journey has too many condition combinations | Too many condition combinations to estimate. |
| The analytics service is unavailable | Estimates unavailable right now and a Not counting right now status line |
The attributes that can never be estimated are Country, Region, City, ZIP / postal code, Continent, Privacy law, Referrer type, Query parameter, Cookie, Visitor timezone, and External profile data. Meter and integration-provided conditions cannot be estimated either. Journeys using them work normally on your site; the panel simply cannot count them.
An A/B test variant condition is estimated from the test's share of traffic and its variant weights, so you can see a draft test's reach before starting it.
Related
- Journeys — Building and ordering journeys
- Targeting Conditions — Every attribute and operator
- Cohorts — Reusable condition sets, and how their reach is estimated
- Testing Journeys — Check a specific visitor rather than a population