Referring Sites

This is an important report in that it shows what sites are referring traffic to your site.  Referring domains can be search engines, bookmarks, other sites with links to your site, and many other possibilities.

The item 'Bookmark or direct' means that a visitor either typed in your site in the address field of the browser, or clicked on a bookmark to get to your site, for example, a 'favorite' item.

IMPORTANT: This report lists the referrers for each user the first time they visit your site in a day (a daily unique visitor).  Whereas the 'Search Engines' report lists all referrals from search engines.  This can lead to a lower number of search engine referrals in this report than the 'Search Engine' report.

This site consolidates the information by domain.  For more information on the exact referring site, including parameters on the URL line, see the 'Referring Sites Detail' report.

For example, if a visitor was referred by Microsoft, this report would show 'www.microsoft.com'.  However, the 'Referring Sites Detail' would show more information, like: http://www.microsoft.com/somepage.asp?someparam=x

Terms Used on Report:

Domain

The address of a site, without the protocol, path, page or other items attached.  For example, "microsoft.com" is a domain.