Facebook referral

[ChristopherGlaeser]

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

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Thanks, that's good to know.  Just wanted to confirm I was not missing something.

Best,
Christopher

[DavidKonigsberg]

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

[ChristopherGlaeser]

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

[DavidKonigsberg]

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

[ChristopherGlaeser]

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

[DavidKonigsberg]

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

[SanketPatel]

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.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

The back-link is not available in Woorpa either.  I'm guessing FB obfuscates the link.

[MoosaHemani]

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!

[ChristopherGlaeser]

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

[ChristopherGlaeser]

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

[SanketPatel]

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 ?

[ChristopherGlaeser]

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

[SanketPatel]

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.