Referral
When a website directs its traffic to another website, it’s referred to as referral traffic. Tracking referrals is essential for understanding how visitors discover your website outside of search engines. For instance, if you include links to your website in social media posts on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, these platforms are recorded as sources of referral traffic. Referrals can also originate from websites sharing news articles, reviews, or other industry-relevant content that link back to your site. Tracking and analyzing referral traffic provide valuable insights into your website’s reach and effectiveness of external promotional efforts.
Example
For example, you run an online fashion boutique, and a popular fashion blogger includes a link to your website in one of their blog posts recommending their favorite online stores. When a reader clicks on the link within the blog post and visits your website to explore your collection, this action generates referral traffic for your website.
In this case, the fashion blogger’s website serves as the referrer, driving traffic to your website through the link they provided. This type of referral can be highly valuable as it exposes your brand to an audience that trusts the recommendation of the fashion blogger, potentially resulting in increased visibility, website traffic, and sales.