You know you’ve made it when your business starts bringing in unsolicited referral traffic.
In this blog, Tyler Kollenborn, VP of Data, Analytics, and insights, will explain what it is, how to get it, and how to track it so that you can find long-term success.
What You’ll Learn
- What is a Referral in Google Analytics 4?
- Set up GA4 to Track Referral Traffic
- How Do I Actually Analyze Referral Traffic in GA4?
- Key Metrics for Analyzing Referral Traffic in GA4
- How to Increase Your Referral Traffic
- Common Referral Traffic Issues and How to Fix Them
- FAQS
My Expert Opinion
Just like word-of-mouth marketing can expand your business, referral traffic can boost your digital marketing experience. As Vice President of Data, Analytics, and insights, I have seen first-hand how businesses that embrace and understand how to build their direct vs. referral traffic can expand.
You can evaluate your marketing efforts more effectively by analyzing the specific Google Analytics sources driving traffic to your website. There are plenty of potential GA4 referral sources, based on where your website links appear, making it important to regularly monitor your traffic.
Learning the ins and outs of Google Analytics 4 reporting and analytics, can help you monitor your traffic sources regularly and holistically manage your campaign. Of course, you should also set specific goals to define the success of your referral traffic, which will help you determine what’s working and what needs more focus.
What Are Referral Sources in Google Analytics?
Referral traffic refers to any web traffic that finds your site organically, such as links from other websites, mentions on social media, and more.
Within Google Analytics 4, it is the attributed traffic source when a user arrives at your website via non-ad links from other websites or apps. Most importantly, it does not require a UTM, as paid traffic does, to be counted as traffic from a referral source.
Referral traffic differs from paid ads, social media, or email campaigns because those traffic sources have an identifiable tracking mechanism. GA4 recognizes those sources and will account for them in your KPI reports.
It’s also different from direct traffic because Google will be able to tell where the referral came from. Think of it as the difference between someone typing in your web address because you told them to and someone stumbling upon your website through a partner site or blog.
As your business grows, you’ll start to earn it through word of mouth, backlinks, and SEO work. As you establish your business as an authority in your industry, other businesses will start mentioning you in their social media content, blog articles, and websites.
What Are the Different Google Analytics Referral Source Types?
There are ultimately many sources that can drive traffic, including:
- Social media sites
- Email marketing campaigns
- Partner and sponsor websites
- Online news publications
- Blogs and guest posts
- Yelp and other review sites
- Online directories
- Affiliate websites
- Any other website that links to yours
Difference Between Referral, Direct, and Unassigned Traffic
There are three primary types of traffic you can track in GA4. Let’s look at the differences between them in Google Analytics:
- Referral Traffic: This type of traffic applies to visitors who visit your website from links on other websites, with referral sources such as blogs, social media sites, and partner sites.
- Direct Traffic: Unlike referral traffic that comes from other sites, direct traffic comes from people manually entering your website address in their browsers or via bookmarks. Without proper tracking parameters, email or document link clicks could also count toward direct traffic.
- Unassigned Traffic: If GA4 is unable to classify traffic in either referral, direct, organic, or paid traffic, the platform will simply label it “unassigned.” To prevent traffic from appearing as unassigned, it’s important to set up tracking parameters for each potential Google Analytics referral source.
Set up GA4 to Track Referral Traffic
Like anything else in digital marketing, you need to set up tracking mechanisms to determine when and where this referral traffic is coming from.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to set it up in Google Analytics 4.
1. Create a GA4 Property
First, you’ll need to establish a GA4 Property. As an Editor or Administrator, you can find this in the GA4 Setup Assistant tool.
Once you’re in Google Analytics, navigate to the lower left-hand corner of the site and click Admin. From there, find the Account column and select the desired account.
In the Property column, click GA4 Setup Assistant. Here, you can create a new Google Analytics 4 property or migrate existing instructions.
Once it’s all set up, it can take up to 30 minutes for Google to start tracking your new property.
2. Navigating the GA4 Interface
Now that you’re properly tracking your it, it’s time to keep up with its progress!
To find your reports within the GA4 interface, go to Reports. Then click on acquisition and finally traffic acquisition.
Google has defaulted to show you the top 5 traffic sources – direct, organic, unassigned, cross-network, and paid search.
Referral traffic is typically listed within the top 10 referral channels. All you need to do is scroll down to find it.
If you can’t find it as you scroll, type in “referral” in the search bar to pull it up.
Once you’re in the GA4 dashboard, you can review all types of metrics including:
- Session campaign
- Session default channel grouping
- Session medium
- Session source
- Session source/medium
- Session source platform
To see where your referrals came from, search in session source/medium. Within the session source/medium, search for referral. This will populate with all of your referral traffic.
3. Setting Up Filters and Segments
The GA4 dashboard also allows you to create segments and filter out unwanted data.
You might ask, “In GA4, how do I view specific referrers to a page?” Segmentation is helpful here. Segments can include location, direct traffic, paid traffic, mobile traffic, and tablet traffic to help you differentiate Google Analytics referral sources.
4. The Referral Exclusion List in GA4
Knowing how to exclude a referral URL in Google Ads via Analytics can help you more carefully manage referral traffic to a page in GA4.
To exclude referrals, follow these simple steps:
1. From Admin, click on Data Streams.
2. Select the stream you want to focus on.
3. Click Configure tag settings.
4. Then Show All.
5. Then List unwanted referrals.
6. Enter all of the domains you want to ignore. Some ideas include third-party payment gateways, self-referrals, and website-managed interactions such as forgotten password emails.
How Do I Actually Analyze Referral Traffic in GA4?
Accessing the report is one thing, but understanding and analyzing it is another. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to analyze your findings.
First, go to the Reports section of your dashboard.
From there, you can take the following actions:
Interpret Referral Traffic Data
You can access your traffic acquisition report through the GA4 dashboard. This pre-made report shows where your web traffic is coming from. Unlike the user acquisition report, it shows data from both new and returning users.
To access it, click on Reports on the left-hand side of the screen, and then Acquisition, and Traffic Acquisition.
Within the Traffic Acquisition report, you can filter traffic to focus on referral sources by selecting “Session Source/Medium.”
How to View Referrals in Google Analytics.
How to View Specific Referral Traffic to a Page in GA4
Within the Session Source/Medium view on GA4, you can use filters to view specific referral URLs.
While the default Source/Medium list includes sources like “organic” and “direct traffic,” you can enter “referral” in the filter field to specifically view referral traffic to a page in GA4.
How to See Referral Traffic in GA4
Key Metrics for Analyzing Referral Traffic in GA4
Some of the main metrics to analyze Google Analytics referral source traffic include:
- Average engagement time per session
- Key events
- Engaged sessions
- Engaged sessions per user
- Engagement rate
- Event count
- Events per session
- Sessions
- Session key event rate
- Total revenue
- Users
As you analyze this data, it’s important to understand the role of referral traffic in the customer journey. Look at where these people are coming from, where they are entering into your customer journey, and where they tend to go next.
Here are some key questions to ask yourself when analyzing the report:
- What landing pages is referral traffic coming into? If it’s one or two pages, how can we better optimize the onsite experience for these users? (Note – this is very common when large publications link to a specific blog post on your website.)
- How engaged are referrals vs. other traffic sources? Referral traffic is unique in that they didn’t actively look to find you, and it’s also not coming from an ad where a user may be more skeptical. Engagement score can be a powerful metric to better understand the quality of the traffic coming through your referral sources.
Identify Top Referral Sources
When looking at your traffic acquisition report, identify your top referral sources. This could reveal a lot about how to increase referral traffic. Look to see if they are delivering quality traffic and leads or the type of traffic you don’t want.
If they deliver quality traffic, a partnership with them could benefit your business. Contact them about forming a collaboration or exploring a mutually beneficial partnership.
Spot Spam
Spam is another thing to look for when analyzing traffic acquisition reports. You’ll be able to identify spam through your behavioral data.
Look for short engagement sessions, unrealistic page views, traffic spikes from a single IP address, and traffic from unlikely origins, such as countries you don’t typically target or “location not set” visits.
You can exclude them from your reports by adding conditions such as “user agent does not contain” and then list common bots like Googlebot or Bingbot. You can also exclude traffic through behavioral patterns by setting up segments like “session duration is less than X seconds.”
How to Increase Your Referral Traffic
If you want to increase your referral traffic, try the following tactics.
Get on Online Directories
Online directories such as Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and Best of the Web are a great way to drum up referral traffic.
Get Published on Review Sites
Sites like Yelp, Angi, Foursquare, and HotFrog can be a hot bed of referral traffic for a lot of businesses.
Publish Guest Blogs
Tapping into other industry authorities’ audiences is a fantastic way to build up referral traffic. Find businesses suitable for your audience and inquire about posting guest blogs or collaborations with them.
Use Social Media
Referral traffic is essentially the digital world’s form of word-of-mouth marketing. What better way to increase word-of-mouth marketing than to create those partnerships that build up engagement? Social media is a great place to form connections and foster relationships that could eventually lead to unsolicited referral traffic.
Common Referral Traffic Issues and How to Fix Them
When tracking Google Analytics referral sources and traffic, there are some potential issues you may need to address, including:
Missing Referral Traffic in Reports
One issue you could experience is a lack of referral traffic in your GA4 reports. Potential causes of this issue may include self-referrals coming from traffic within your own domain, improper tagging, or filtered domains.
Some solutions to this problem could include:
- Checking to see that you’re not blocking valid referral sources in your exclusion list
- Verifying that your website has proper tagging with UTM tracking parameters
- Reviewing your data stream settings to ensure you have proper tracking set up
Direct Traffic vs. Unassigned Traffic in Google Analytics
When checking GA4 referral sources, you could also encounter unassigned traffic that doesn’t fall under a specific category.
Reasons for this problem may include, again, improperly implemented UTM parameters, inadequate tagging and configuration, or issues handling redirects and referrals.
Solutions could include:
- Checking your GA4 tagging and configuration to ensure the proper settings
- Configuring UTM sources and mediums
- Using cross-domain tracking
- Handling referrals and redirects the right way
FAQS
1. How is referral traffic different in UA and GA4?
You might notice some slight differences between UA and GA4. For example, GA4 will track active users and event count, whereas UA did not.
2. Why can’t I see referral traffic?
Initially, GA4 will only show the top 5 traffic sources. To find your referral traffic, scroll down through the top 10 list. You can also search specifically for “referrals” using the search option.
3. When should I exclude referral traffic?
Most businesses want to exclude it from third-party payment processors like PayPal or Shopify, as well as website-managed interactions like forgotten password emails, your own domain, or spam sites.
Boost Referral Traffic with Ignite Visibility
Whether you’re looking to increase referral traffic or need help analyzing your referral source reports, Ignite Visibility has you covered.
Ignite Visibility can help you:
- Establish quality backlinks
- Embrace guest blog posts and collaboration opportunities
- Build a solid content marketing strategy
- Incorporate social media into your marketing strategy
- And more!
Ready to get started?
