No Referring Link – Explained

Hi folks,

“Came From” Stats

Your StatCounter “Came From” stats provide you with information about how people are coming to your site.
camefrom

In your “Came From” stats you will see a list of sites via which visitors come to your site. These sites which refer visitors to your site might be forums, blogs, search engines, directories or websites of any kind that provide links to your site. You may also see entries for “No Referring Link” – we’ll explain what this means in this post.

Indirect and Direct Visitors

Visitors to your website can arrive in two distinct ways. For example:

A Vistor Can Arrive at your site INDIRECTLY by:

  • Clicking though to your website from a Search Engine
  • Following a link to your site on a blog
  • Clicking a link in a forum where someone recommends your site

OR a Visitor Can Arrive at your site DIRECTLY by:

  • Typing your web address directly into their browser address bar
  • Clicking a bookmarked link to your site in their browser


Indirect Visitors

If a visitor arrives at your site via a search engine, the visitor has been referred to your site by the search engine therefore you will see a referring link from the search engine in your stats.

referring_url

In other words, you will only see a referring link in your stats, if a visitor has been referred to your site by another website, blog, forum or search engine.

Direct Visitors

If a visitor arrives at your site by typing your website address directly into their browser, the visitor has NOT been referred to your site by any other site, therefore you will see a “No Referring Link” entry in your StatCounter stats.

referring_url2

In other words, if a vistor comes to your site directly (i.e. without being referred to your site by any other site), then there is no referring link for that visitor.

No Referring Link – what’s the significance?

There are a number of reasons why you could have a high proportion of “No Referring Link” entries in your stats. For example:

  • People may get to know your web address offline (e.g. in flyers or newspapers) so they simply go directly to your site rather than looking for your site in a search engine.
  • You may have a lot of returning visitors who have bookmarked your site so that they can quickly revisit it.

As usual, comments, questions and suggestions welcome!

UPDATE:
To ensure that all referring links are captured, you should make sure that you have StatCounter code installed on all pages of your site. It is not sufficient to have StatCounter installed on your homepage only. This is because visitors may enter your site at any page not just your homepage.

118 Comments

  1. Your explanation of the blank page names seems wrong.

    A lot of mine come from identified corporate networks (lots of investment banks), the user agents are usually conventional browsers (Goolge, MS, Yahoo all use identifiable user agents) although a number of corporate network users show Rippers 0 (I am guessing either caching or the firewall disguising the browser).

  2. Have been using statcounter for almost 3 years now. one of the best free alternative there.

  3. Most (>90%) of my referring links are images.googles.xxxx ? where the image xxxx is located at my web page. Checking with googles they do not even list my image in the first place … . How come that I get most Come from via google images?

  4. Thank you for the explanation. I often use non referral techniques (such as flyers) to attract visitors. Althought not really accurate i still get a good view of those visitors typing the domainname directly. Regards, betty

  5. can you block a Stat Count? Can you make your account private so no one can trace you back?when you look at a page

  6. Thanks for this explanation. I have always wondered why the stat code showed “no referred link”. I thought those guys probably disabled that in their browsers.

  7. Good point about no referring link.
    Also people come to sites from a desktop link for example and that is visible as a directory address on the visitor’s hard drive… c:/documents and settings/compname/my documents. I have a few of those sometimes…

  8. Referring links are very helpful and help us to know how our traffics come. Thanks.

  9. Are you stats lagging a bit today, Statcounter? They seem to be updating very sporadically this afternoon.

    Not that I’m a hopeless stats-addict, of course…

  10. What type of visitor is it when they come to your site from RSS? A direct or indirect?

    Thanks, keep up the good work guys!

  11. the difference between ‘came from’ and ‘recently came from’ is a little harder to understand..?

  12. Chad, first off God bless your dad and you
    Thank you to you and your Dad
    Be safe and God Bless

    Chef Paul

  13. I just wish Statcounter would make it live like Who’s on.. That would be Nice. But Statcounter is great. For Cool Electronics And More Click On My Name And Go to Link……..

  14. Gain Muscles, It is possible to have traffic come via a search engine and not get a referrer. Their are browser add-ons that can prevent that info from getting passed on, and also using proxies.

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