Marketing Bites

Check Your Referral Sources in Google Analytics

Your site could be getting traffic from non-search engine sources, and you may not even know it. Google Analytics reports information in their "Referrals" section, which lets you see what domains (and pages within those domains) are referring traffic to your site, how much traffic they're referring, which landing pages are the most popular referral destinations, and the extent to which those referred visitors interact with your site.

Referrals can be a great source of traffic. For instance, if you're posting videos on YouTube or pinning photos or videos on Pinterest, you want to see whether those efforts are driving visitors to your site, and how much. Other sources of referral traffic could be a product review, blog post, or news story that you didn't know about.

Check your referral traffic by logging into your Google Analytics account. On the left side of the screen in the "Standard Reports" navigation menu, click "Traffic Sources", then "Referrals". 

To investigate a traffic source, click the source domain to see the specific pages in that domain that are driving traffic (the referral path). You can append the referral path to the domain name to visit the referring page in order to see the context in which your site is linked.


Subscribe Now

About the Marketing Bite

Marketing Bites are short actionable tips to help you market your business. Each Bite contains a marketing idea and an easy to complete action. The Marketing Bite is emailed weekly to subscribers.

Readers say...

"You offer such great information - I feel like I am gaining a bigger and smarter marketing presence. Thank you so much!" -Pamela

"Thanks. I have been getting a lot of value from [the Marketing Bite]. If I need help with marketing on the web in the future, I know where to find the experts." -Jodi

Take Your Website From Zero to Hero!
Let Us Know
How We Can Help!
MightyMerchant