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. Interesting question. I think visitors from flash files will show up as No referring link

  2. I have a question. If the user came to my site through a link in a flash file, would it be counted as no referring link or will the flash file URL show up? Does statcounter recognize flash? Thanks

  3. Hello,

    Thank you so much for this great post. I have a quick question though; how do you tell if the visitor came from PPC or organic? Is there a way to tell if the keyword that the user typed in to get to our website showed up in organic or PPC?

    Thank you in advance,
    Ashkan Sobhe

  4. This is what you see when the browser’s javascript is turned off, or the visitor is using a proxy, or you are using the html only code.

    22nd January 2010 12:19:29 AM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 12:19:35 AM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 04:23:14 PM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 04:23:22 PM Page View No referring link
    23rd January 2010 04:16:09 PM Page View No referring link
    23rd January 2010 04:16:15 PM Page View No referring link
    24th January 2010 04:04:39 PM Page View No referring link

  5. This is what you see when the browser’s javascript is turned off, or the visitor is using a proxy

    22nd January 2010 12:19:29 AM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 12:19:35 AM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 04:23:14 PM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 04:23:22 PM Page View No referring link
    23rd January 2010 04:16:09 PM Page View No referring link
    23rd January 2010 04:16:15 PM Page View No referring link
    24th January 2010 04:04:39 PM Page View No referring link

  6. I been notice that and have helping us on-line.
    I specially like to see the search engines results on my statcounter, it gives us a lot of information.
    The best part is the keyword that our clients use to find us.

    Baptista

  7. Hi,

    I’ve a single visiter visiting my site daily with no referring link. What could cause such visits?

    Vodafone Portugal (213.30.86.66) [Label IP Address]

    For Example:
    —————
    Portugal Coimbra, Portugal, 0 returning visits

    Date Time Type WebPage
    22nd January 2010 12:19:29 AM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 12:19:35 AM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 04:23:14 PM Page View No referring link
    22nd January 2010 04:23:22 PM Page View No referring link
    23rd January 2010 04:16:09 PM Page View No referring link
    23rd January 2010 04:16:15 PM Page View No referring link
    24th January 2010 04:04:39 PM Page View No referring link
    —————————————————————————-

  8. Ahaaa… I see. Well explained! So many times you find things explained about the net and websites.. that just confuses one even more. Top marks Team 😉
    Great service by the by!

  9. I have been using SC for all most 5 years and its been great all the time.
    You guys rock.
    Thanks for the new features.

  10. All this is fine , but for the last week or so the Statcounter button is not appearing on my blog! Even the Statcounter website does not open , either in explorer or in firefox. Something gone wrong big ? Does not look like “server down” type of problem.
    Any solutions?

  11. Can you please explain me why i am not getting the reference link when getting traffic through flash banner. Do i need to do anything to track flash referral traffic ?

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