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?
- How Do I Find Referral Traffic For My Website?
- What To Look For In Referral Traffic Reports
- Why I’m Not Seeing Referral Traffic
My Expert Opinion On Referral Traffic
Just like word-of-mouth marketing can expand your business, referral traffic can boost your digital marketing experience. I have seen first-hand how businesses that embrace and understand how to build their direct vs. referral traffic can expand.
Action Item: Learn how to see referral traffic in GA4 and analyze it regularly. Make note of where your high-quality traffic is coming from and develop ways to increase traffic from those sources.
What Is Referral Traffic
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 referral traffic 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.
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 up referral traffic in Google Analytics 4.
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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.
Navigating the GA4 Interface
Now that you’re properly tracking your referral traffic, 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.
Setting Up Filters and Segments
The GA4 dashboard also allows you to create segments and filter out unwanted referral traffic.
To exclude referrals, follow these simple steps:
- From Admin, click on Data Streams.
- Select the stream you want to focus on.
- Click Configure tag settings.
- Then Show All.
- Then List unwanted referrals.
- 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 referral traffic report is one thing, but understanding and analyzing it is another. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to analyze your findings.
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.
Metrics in this source referral report 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.
FAQS on Referral Traffic
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
