Website Referrers: Where is my Website Traffic Coming from?

According to the Web Analytics Association, the term “referrer” indicates where the traffic to your website is coming from; the term can relate to different types of referrers, including: internal, external, search or direct navigation. 

Referral traffic can be one of the most insightful metrics that Google Analytics and other web analytics platforms measure because digital marketers and businesses in general can gain insight to the customers intentions by: (Kaushik, 2010).

• Examining the source they entered the website from (internal and/or external referrers)
• The search engine that led them to the website (search referrers)
• If the user typed in the website URL directly or already had your website bookmarked (direct navigation)  

Leading Referrers in 2017: Google vs. Facebook

As 2017 came to a close, Google regained the crown as the largest external traffic referrer over Facebook. Companies like the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, and Huffington Post use Parse.ly, a digital analytics platform that reported this news (Molla, 2017).

At the beginning of the year, Facebook was responsible for nearly 40 percent of the external referral traffic to these websites and by the end of 2017, the social networking site dropped to 26 percent, while Google led with 44 percent, a 10 percent increase from January. 

Sometimes, outside referrers are influenced by societal culture, while other times businesses can have a stronger influence on referral traffic to their site. Factors that could have influenced the shift in external referral traffic from Facebook to Google could include Facebook’s continuous updates to their algorithm, Google’s SERPs became increasingly mobile friendly by showing searchers top stories relating to their search, and the increased public awareness of “Fake News” (Molla, 2017). With users more aware of “Fake News”, there could have been a shift in readers who once relied on Facebook as their main news source to now start at Google to ensure they’re getting the most reliable news possible, that isn’t influenced by the social network’s algorithm. 

Through the use of a consistent algorithm, studying the systems where the majority of traffic is coming from (mobile) and increasing user experience by sharing top stories on the search results pages, Google became the leading external referrer of traffic to large news sites in 2017. 

Growth Labs: Doubling Website Traffic through Referrals

Growth Labs, a digital marketing agency, had a goal to increase their website traffic over a four-month time-span. By adding more posts to their blog, promoting this new content over their social media, email, and Medium account channels, and engaging with their audience more through social media, the agency doubled their website traffic within their set range (Tavakoli, 2015).

The agency saw that the majority of their visitors came from social media channels and search referrals. So by increasing the number of blog posts they published every month, they increased the overall number and mix of keywords within their marketing plan which played a role in the number of queries they were able to popup for in search referrals. 

Why Referrers are Important

In summation, referral traffic of all types is important for a number of reasons, the main one being that it results in visitors to your website. Businesses can identify the main sources of their traffic and adjust marketing campaigns based on those findings. They may be able to find holes in their existing campaigns that can be filled through the data that referrer traffic provides. 

However, examining referral traffic in addition to other metrics can benefit businesses even more. By combining metrics like referrers and conversion rates, businesses can uncover what their highest converting referral channel is and invest more. If more customers are coming from paid search ads, then businesses should look into investing more into paid search. In terms of SEO, links from external websites can not only drive more traffic to your website, but Google and other search engines see interlinking between related websites as a positive web factor, so this can help to increase businesses’ rankings as well (Kiel, 2017). 

References: 

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley.

Kiel, M. (2017, August 9). How To Increase Referral Traffic And Get More Leads. Hubspot. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-increase-referral-traffic-and-get-more-leads

Molla, R. (2017, December 11). Google is sending more traffic than Facebook to publishers — again. CNBC. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/11/google-is-sending-more-traffic-than-facebook-to-publishers--again.html

Reed College of Media (2018). IMC 642, Lesson 1. Retrieved January 21, 2018 from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_97081_1&content_id=_4434991_1&framesetWrapped=true

Tavakoli, M. (2015). Case Study: How We Doubled Our Website Traffic in 4 Months. Growth Labs. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from https://www.growthlabs.marketing/blog/case-study-how-we-doubled-our-website-traffic-in-4-months

Web Analytics Association. (2008, September 22). Web analytics definitions. Retrieved on January 21, 2018 from: http://www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/Files/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitions.pdf