What are Referrers?

Referrers are websites that send visitors to another domain with external hyperlinks. In the case of referrers for your domain, these are websites that were previously visited by your users. Your website can also be a referrer for another website if you refer visitors to other websites.

Categories of Referrers

Most referrers can be categorized into four main categories;

• Search e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc
• Social Media e.g. Instagram, Facebook,
• Websites e.g. nytimes.com, zeit.de, nu.nl etc
• Direct – where a user enters the URL in the address bar

Some categories have subcategories to specify the device, campaigns or services. For example:

• Google Search – Mobile
• Facebook App
• mail.google.com / referrer