Referring domain

Last update: September 21, 2023

CREATED FOR:

  • User
  • Admin

The ‘Referring domain’ dimension reports which domains visitors click through to reach your site. This dimension is useful to understand which third-party sites drive the most traffic to yours. A link must exist on the external site and a visitor must click it in order for the dimension item to show up.

IMPORTANT
You must configure your report suite’s Internal URL filters to use this dimension. Failure to configure internal URL filters can either include internal domains or prevent external domains from appearing.

The same report can show different results between Analysis Workspace and Data Warehouse. Analysis Workspace reports the referring domain for each individual page, excluding values that match internal URL filters. Data Warehouse reports only the first referring domain of the visit, and ignores internal URL filters.

Populate this dimension with data

This dimension requires configuration in the Analytics interface and data in image requests.

  • Within your implementation, this dimension retrieves data from the r query string in image requests. AppMeasurement collects this data using the JavaScript variable document.referrer in the browser. If you use an AppMeasurement library (such as through tags in Adobe Experience Platform), this dimension works out of the box. If you use a data collection method outside of AppMeasurement (such as through the API), make sure that you include the r query string parameter in image requests.
  • Within the Analytics interface, you must configure your report suite’s Internal URL filters. Failure to configure internal URL filters can either include internal domains or prevent external domains from appearing.

Adobe persists referring domain for a visit. If a visitor leaves and clicks through a link on a different domain within a single visit, the new value updates and persists for the remainder of the visit. If you only want to see the original value, see Original referring domain.