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
-
Google Analytics - Referral traffic being reported as Direct traffic
Hi, I have a link on my www homepage to another subdomain website. Both websites are served on https, and have independent Google Analytics properties. However, the traffic from the www site to the subdomain site is being reported as Direct, and not Referral traffic. Any ideas why? See image provided for context... RCn6HER
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley1 -
Combine Facebook referrals into one
Hello, I am a bit confused about the correct setting of filter to combine All facebook referrals into one.
Reporting & Analytics | | Johnroger
After going through different versions, not sure which one is correct and will work Some versions say that Search string should be - *^.facebook.com$ and Replace string should be - facebook.com While according to other Search string should be > *.facebook
and Replace string should be - facebook Please guide which one of this is correct and will work ? Thanks0 -
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 -
Referrals - How is it possible I have 5 new users and 100 sessions over a 2 week period?
I have a referral from an email (2), android search(1) and another website(2) but my sessions is 100 over a two week period? I have NO returning visitors (still session data though?) Seems unlikely that just these 5 users have generated 100 sessions!! Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | darrenbooy0 -
Payment gateway referrals disappeared
Hi All, I was getting payment gateway referrals for my site for many months but when I have implemented enhanced eCommerce tracking self referral issue resolved but I haven't read anywhere about this solution so I just want to confirm once . Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Referral Exclusion List - Data Questsion
This may seem like a silly question. Since we are having an issue with self-referrals, we checked all the pages and everything is tagged properly, I used the referral exclusion list to exclude our domains. Question is, since we had a large number of our revenue coming in from the self-referring traffic, what happens to that revenue data once I add our domains to the referral exclusion list?
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
Loss of referral traffic after change of CMS, host
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 -
Will having a subdomain cause referral traffic from the domain name?
Hi! One of our clients has a site with the store on a subdomain: store.example.com. When we've set up goals for order confirmation pages, we often see most of the sources attributed to example.com. Is this because of the subdomain issue? How would we correct it so that we would see as the referring source for the goal the site that sent to the root domain originally, and not the site that sent to the subdomain? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | debi_zyx0