Google Analytics - Referral Traffic Question
-
How Google Analytics determine that some particular web site referred traffic if there is no back link on that site?
-
Referrals are a header. It doesn't matter if GA is on the site.
-
Are you sure there's not a link to your site on the referring site? How are you checking?
Google Analytics will be capturing the source location from the referer set in the http header when someone visits your site.
-
The referral is something that is passed by the user's browser when they visit your site, so even if the link is in a forum or somewhere that Google can't access, Analytics can still see whatever is reported by the user's browser.
The wikipedia article on HTTP referer is a good one to read for a more detailed explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer
-
Google Analytics can only determine referred traffic if a site has Google Analytics installed on it. Sites that do not have GA installed will not be able to see any of these stats.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Tracking Sessions for 301 Re-Direct in Google Analytics
Trying to track clicks for individual slides on a homepage slider. I cannot enter UTM codes on the slide links, just choose from a dropdown containing pages on my site (WordPress). So, I set-up 301 re-directs for all the slides. /slide1-redirect
Reporting & Analytics | | jbernier
/slide-2-redirect etc.. Will these redirect pages show up in GA? I cannot see them. I'm trying to create a Dashboard for Homepage slider clicks. John0 -
Google Analytics direct traffic dropped by 50% after switching to https
Hi, everyone, have a little dilemma and was hoping to get some advice here. I recently installed a new SSL (3 months ago) to force our URL to start with https://. The site was earlier accessible through https:// and http:// prefix however now I have made it so that all urls are redirected to the correct https:// version. The problem is that direct traffic has dropped by more than 50% after implementing these changes and I can for the life of me figure out why. Why would the direct traffic drop all of sudden after making these changes? I am starting to suspect that the earlier data was inflated and that Google analytics was counting users coming from a http:// version of the URL to a https:// version of the URL was counted as direct traffic. Could that be it? Any other possible causes? Would really appreciate any guidance on this problem. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | nsereke0 -
Stop getting info from Google analytics on purchases in our site
Hi guys, We have eCommerce.
Reporting & Analytics | | WayneRooney
We connected the site to the Google analytic eCommerce.
Everything was work fine until 3 weeks ago. Suddenly we stooped getting purchases information in the analytic although i see purchases in the website. We didn't change anything in the website and i really don't know how to solve this problem.
If someone here can point me where i can get some info on how to fix it it can be great. Thanks a lot!0 -
Google Analytics: How to Track Blog Traffic that Enter the Purchase Funnel?
I've been trying to figure this out for awhile, but I have had no luck. The current ecommerce store that I work for is trying to find out how to track how many people coming in via the blog are converting/buying. The site lives on Magento and the blog is on wordpress and they both use the same Google Analytics code. Site URL: http://website.com/ Blog URL: http://website.com/blog Is there anyway to do this so you can see which landing pages are driving conversions? If not, Is it possible to set up Google Analytics to show conversions and revenue coming from people who enter through blog directory?
Reporting & Analytics | | Erik-M0 -
Google Analytics subdomain ecommerce tracking flatlines :-(
Buongiorno from 19 degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 This website http://www.philpotts.co.uk/ contains a shop sub domian @ http://shop.philpotts.co.uk/. I configured the site Ga analytics code to include the subdomain (see below code). I had to do this as i was getting refferal data from the actuall subdomain. But after following the instructions on p117 of cutroni's ga book things have gone wrong, mainly now eCommerce data has dissapeared 😞 So my question is please: "Why has installing the GA code above caused eCommerce tracking to suddenly go dead?" Grazie tanto,
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
David0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments
Has anyone else found that Google Analytics Content Experiments seems to quite quickly favor the best performing variant in an experiment, and then show that variant many times more often than other/s - not split the traffic evenly? What is Google's thinking behind 'optimizing' during an experiment? It seems odd to me.
Reporting & Analytics | | David_ODonnell0 -
Google Analytics Queries
Hi we used a web company who put our analytics under their company name we have left them and set up a new tracking code not associated with them, but we still have access to the data and it is all contained under the same login, is it possible to merge the two tracking codes? so that we have seemless history. Also does anyone know if you can change the primary e-mail address (gmail account) to a corporate email account? Any help would be appreciated as we have researched both and from what we have found we can't merge the data and also we are stuck with the primary email address.
Reporting & Analytics | | loopylu030 -
What is the best way to track mobile sites in Google Analytics?
Hello! I am wondering what the pros and cons of using the regular Google Analytics tracking code on a mobile site versus the tracking documentation from Google specifically on it found at http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/web/ which is still in labs mode. Does the mobile specific tracking have the same features as the regular one to be able to track events and report the same statistics? Thanks for the help on this one!
Reporting & Analytics | | CabbageTree0