Facebook referral
-
Olympic athletes in track & field and BMX use our product in their training. When they discuss how they use our product on Facebook, we get a boost in traffic. However, all I see in programs like Woopra is facebook.com in the URL, but not the actual page. How do I determine which FB post with a link to our site is causing the increase in traffic?
Best,
Christopher -
Thanks, that's good to know. Just wanted to confirm I was not missing something.
Best,
Christopher -
Correct Facebook doesnt allow us or anyone to see that shared data. Also they took away from google the ability to use share data etc
-
Thanks, that's another useful tool, but it does not address the links to which I'm referring.
If someone posts a link to my site (they don't use any FB tools, just a raw URL) I don't know of any way to track that. I see the hits on my site via GA and other tools, but all I know is the link came from facebook.com and that's all. I don't know of any way to see who posted a link to my site on FB. It would seem to me that many SEOs would want to know this. I'm surprised this has not been discussed before on SEOmoz. Unless I'm missing something, this seems like a huge hole in data collection, given that FB is so pervasive and links from FB are so common.
Best,
Christopher -
You can see which url got shared - go to this page https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/activity/
add your domain then change height to 4400
or you can see landing pages in analytics - but your correct that you cant see who did it
-
Thanks, the URL Builder will come in handy for my posts. When other people post FB links to my site, apparently there is no way to track that.
Does FB or a third party offer an app to track the source of these links? Given the shear scope of FB, this seems like a huge oversight. I can't believe someone has not solved this.
Best,
Christopher -
Your best way is to tag your links in your status posts with a special tag- you can use the url builder here http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867
Then you can see which post got you the clicks in GA
-
Sorry my tool socialmention.com not working its showing no data. But I have typed below query in Google.com
site:facebook.com "bmx Caroline Buchanan"
And I get this URL: http://www.facebook.com/CBuchanan68 where they have mentioned about you but dates are not matching.
-
The back-link is not available in Woorpa either. I'm guessing FB obfuscates the link.
-
To be honest Google is not that smart at the moment that it will provide you the exact URL of from which post the traffic is coming from!
-
PS: On an parallel topic, a large and growing percentage of my organic searches are encrypted. So, I don't know a large fraction of the search terms people are using to get to my site, and due to this FB issue, I don't know a large fraction of the back links people are using to get to my site. It's like I'm going backwards at an accelerating pace.
Best,
Christopher -
It was Olympic BMX Caroline Buchanan on November 13. But that is working backwards. Suppose I got a hit from FB and did not know why. What then? Given that Social Media is such a huge part of SEO, I'm surprised this data is not available, but apparently not.
Best,
Christopher -
Google don't have that much control on facebook data. May I know the date and product name which athlete has mentioned in post ? I know some of the tools by which I can find that post ?
-
Thanks for the quick response. I'm a GA novice, so maybe it's there and I don't see it, but all I see under Traffic Sources>Sources>Referrals is m.facebook.com for the source and l.php for the referral. I'm pretty sure I know where the traffic came from due to the date that an Olympic athlete posted, but how would I find that post using GA if I had not know the athlete? Does FB intentionally hide this information?
Best,
Christopher -
Hi Christopher,
Do you have analytic access ? In Analytic go to Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals >
You will get all referring sites in that click on facebook.com, You will get exact facebook pages where you are getting traffic.
Note: They might also be running paid campaign in facebook.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Display" referrals on google analytics
We have just had 200+ visits on the 'Display' channel within 5 minutes - these referrals are from all over the world and this is very out the ordinary for our business - should we be concerned? 9cHllwW
Reporting & Analytics | | RayflexGroup0 -
Domain change from .co.uk to .com - do you add .com to the referral exclusion in GA?
Hi Mozzers, Just wanted to double check that when a website domain changes from .co.uk to .com - do you add .com to the referral exclusion in GA? Do you also keep the .co.uk version in the list too? I have updated the property settings to .com Thanks Anthony
Reporting & Analytics | | Tone_Agency0 -
Stripping referrer on website with a mix of both http and https
I know going from https to http (usually) strips referrers but I was wondering if the referrer is stripped when your website is a mix of both http and https? Say someone browses your site (on http), adds a product and then goes to your cart (https), then decides to go back to another page on your website which is http. Will this strip the referrer? Any help on this would be great, thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Fitto0 -
Some goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Yesterday I have created Google analytics account for a new website but few goal conversions comes from payment gateway site (paypal.com, epdq.co.uk) and showing under referral. How to fix this issue so I can know the real source of Goal conversion. *Note - utm_nooverride=1 on thank you page applied, payment gateway URL is already placed in Referral Exclusion List. So please don't suggest either of them. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
Loss of Google referral traffic after server move / CMS move
I have a client that changed from MoveableType to Wordpress. He also changed from a dedicated server to WP Engine. He may have blocked search engines for a week or two, so his organic traffic is down but only by 25%. He's 301 redirecting all of the old pages. The mystery is that his referral traffic from Google is down 90%. It's a popular blog, so that's thousands. It's been going on a month now. Anyone seen this before?
Reporting & Analytics | | Hyper-Dog0 -
A lot of traffic to one page from Google referral
We recently received a lot of traffic to one page from
Reporting & Analytics | | underthesun808
google.com referral. When I look in analytics it reports that the traffic is
coming from /url that’s not real helpful. Is there a way to get more specific
information as to what the referring url was?0 -
Internal site referrers
Hi, So I have a segment of my website-let’s call it /examplea, I am trying to figure out how many visits I have to /examplea from all other areas of my website i.e. /exampleb, /examplec etc to /examplea so almost internal site refers to a particular segment of my website, Any thoughts on how to do this within Google analytics ? Marc
Reporting & Analytics | | NRMA0