Referrers and linking sites
Every website that sends you visitors in one list, with a detail view of each site's linking pages, landing pages and conversions.
Referrers are the websites where someone clicked a link to reach you. Open Referrers in the site sidebar to see all of them, then open one site to see which of its pages link to you and what its visitors do. The toolbar's date range, comparison, filters and segment apply to both views.
Visits that arrive directly (a typed address, a bookmark, most apps) have no referrer and are left out. So are clicks between your own pages.
The list#
The cards at the top sum up referred traffic: the number of referring sites, their visitors and visits, their share of all visits, and the bounce rate and median visit duration of those visits.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Kind of traffic | The channels referrers fall into (organic search, organic social, AI assistants, referral and so on) with their visitors. Click one to list only that kind, All to go back |
| Search | Lists only sites whose name contains the text |
| Visitors, Visits, Pageviews headings | Sort the list by that column |
| A site | Opens its detail view |
| Previous and Next | Move through the list, 25 sites at a time |
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Site | The referring site, without www. or m. |
| Kind of traffic | The channel most of its visits were given |
| Linking pages | How many different pages on that site sent visitors |
| Visitors | Visitors it sent, with the share of all referred visitors |
| Visits, Pageviews | Of the visits it sent |
| Bounce rate, Visit duration | How engaged those visits were |
| Revenue | Shown when the site sent visits with revenue |
One referring site#
The header has Visit site, Filter the dashboard (opens the Overview showing only this site's visitors) and JSON. Under it are the site's visitors, visits, pageviews, share of all visits, views per visit, bounce rate and visit duration (with the change when a comparison is on), and a chart of its visitors over time.
| Card | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Linking pages | The top 20 pages on the referring site that sent visitors. Click one to open it in a new tab |
| Landing pages | The top 10 pages those visitors arrived on, with visitors and bounce rate. Click one for its page detail, filtered to this referrer |
| Conversions | Goals completed in visits from this site, with the conversion rate |
| Countries, Devices, Campaigns | Who the visitors are. Click a row to open the Overview filtered to it |
Only the host and path of a referrer are stored. Query strings are dropped
before anything is saved, so a linking page such as
news.ycombinator.com/item covers every thread on that path
(see the data inventory).
You can also open a site's detail with the icon next to a row in the Overview's Sources panel (Referrers tab) and in the Referrers drill-down table.
In the API these are GET /sites/<site id>/referrers.json (MCP:
referrers_list) and
GET /sites/<site id>/referrers/detail.json?referrer=news.ycombinator.com
(MCP: referrers_detail).