Referral Traffic
Visitors who arrive by clicking a link on another website that is not a search engine or tagged campaign. Analytics records the referring domain, letting you see which external sites, partners, and publications actually send people to you and how those visitors behave.
Why It Matters
Referral data reveals which backlinks and partnerships deliver real audiences rather than just link equity, guiding outreach and PR investment. It also surfaces unexpected sources worth nurturing or, in the case of spam, filtering out.
Common Mistake
Not setting up a referral exclusion list, so your own payment processor or subdomains appear as referrers and fragment sessions. This inflates referral counts and breaks conversion attribution.