Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Facebook.com / referral - What is it?
-
Hi Moz community!
Coming to you today to ask a two fold question about a mysterious source/medium combination and also social medium data in general.
First question relates to the attached image named 'Facebook Referral.' We've made sure to apply correct tags to all of our campaigns, both organic and paid, and are having a difficult time figuring out where this source/medium comes from which is a bit troubling as it actually has pulled in some revenue over the past couple of months
The second question is around general Facebook data. Our Facebook business manager is vastly over reporting clicks to landing pages. For instance, we saw about 1,700 clicks to site as reported by Facebook business manager, whereas Google Analytics only registered about 950. I know data between the two channels rarely lines up perfectly, but this seems like a rather wide variance.
Can someone help me to understand this, and let me know if there is anyway to reduce the occurrence of one or both of the issues we're facing. Thanks!
-
Ciao Massimiliano!
Thanks for the response here. We have been appending UTM's to our destination URL's, and those seem to account for the vast majority of sessions. However, most of the revenue is attributed to that untrackable source/medium combo.
-
Thanks Ira!
I sincerely appreciate your response!
-
What's the attribution rules you set up in FB business manager? google analytics counts only last click as a click, by default facebook counts any click as a click,
if your site is on http and the user is browsing facebook on https (which most likely is) the referrer header is lost on the click, and you will see the visit as coming from direct traffic, you can fix that just adding analytics tracking parameters to the url you publish on facebook
-
Hi Drew,
This article has the best info on the facebook.com/referral question that I've seen - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Articles/facebook-com-referral-on-Google-Analytics/ba-p/539366.
As for the discrepancy you are seeing between FB and GA, I've seen similar issues at times - hoping someone else will have some insight into that one!
Ira
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 SERP shows wrong (and inappropriate) thumbnail for Facebook videos?
Hello I'm running into a strange issue with at least one of my client's video. The video is posted on Facebook. When searching for the video on Google, the SERP shows a completely wrong, and inappropriate, thumbnail image. (And in one case the preview video starts playing within Google SERP.) It also seems that Google is indexing various countries' facebook page for the same video separately (it-it.facebook.com, fr-fr.facebook.com, etc). Note that only the thumbnail and preview video within Google are wrong; if you click on the link, you see the correct video and page. I hesitate to divulge the actual client video, but there are some reports on Google's search community about the same behavior: Here's one that stargs back in March: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/33760205?hl=en and a more recent one: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/71452151?hl=en It looks increasingly like a bug in some google algorithm, but nobody at google seems to acknowledge that. I've unpublished the original video from FB and submitted an 'outdated content' removal to Google, which is pending. In the meantime, my questions for our group of experts here: Has anyone else experienced this and any other suggestionso n how to fix? If we assume that this is not a google bug: how could a malicious actor or black-hat SEO influence Google's algorithms to cause this? Thanks, mickey
Social Media | | infamia0 -
Can we create regional pages on Facebook?
Hi, Our business spans across many countries and in order to maintain brand consistency, we were contemplating to create regional fan pages on Facebook. The structure would be like parent-child relation i.e. one main page and other regional pages. Is it possible? We searched for it but could't find something concrete except that in 2012 Facebook was testing similar concept. Regards
Social Media | | IM_Learner1 -
What do you do when your Facebook page is Unpublished?
The page in question has been there for about 5 years and has about 80 followers. It is for a business that sells steel plate (B2B) and everything is totally compliant with Facebook T&C as far as I can tell. It's been unpublished with the statement "Your Page has been unpublished and it cannot be published again." We did an appeal about 6 weeks ago and heard absolutely nothing.... Generally we got no likes, no comments and reached about 20 people with each post. So I am lost as to why we were banned and lost as to what we do next It's fine if they want to unpublish - it's their site - what's frustrating is the arbitrariness, the lack of information as to why it was banned and lack of communication. It's fine if it's a spam site (except if you are a spammer) but I'm selling boring steel plates..... pwqkaz1xzkx7myx2ncwn
Social Media | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics
Hello, One of my clients has a Facebook page for his company, and his social media manager posts some promotional and educational posts on daily basis. the social media manager uses affiliate ID's in the destination URL to track traffic and leads that come from the social media and to make it look nicer he uses shortcut links service - bitly. Now I have a few questions about this: I don't see traffic comes from bit.ly or bitly.com in Google Analytics, my question: is using 301 redirect makes Google Analytics understand that the last website which sent the traffic to my website is not the actual Referral website? Is using shortcut links in the social media damages the links value (even though they are <nofollow>links - but still considered as signals from social media</nofollow> Thanks. LorS1nd.jpg
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
We got 10,000 facebook likes overnight from people in another country. WHY? How do I get rid of them?
Our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MobileAttic received more than 10,000 likes over night. We only had about 250 likes prior to this. I know this hurts our engagement numbers as well as limits real customers / community from seeing our posts. Is there any way to get our fans down to a real "non-spammed" number?
Social Media | | jstallings0 -
Is Manta.com worth paying?
Hello, I have currently have a Free listing but Im considering paying the monthly fee. Does it really generate leads? Does it help for link building and SEO?
Social Media | | ogdcorp
If it does, is it wise to link back to the profile page or the home page? Thanks0 -
Goarticles.com has anyone used them to generate traffic and brand
Hi has anyone used go articles.com to increase their brand awareness and traffic. I have been using the site for a while now but never seen any real results where our articles only get a couple of views over the space of a few months while i have seen some other articles on the site that claim they are receiving thousands. would like to know if the stats are true what is the secret to generating traffic to the articles on the site and if there are better article sites out there to increase brand awareness.
Social Media | | ClaireH-1848861 -
Is there any SEO benefit to hosting your Facebook photos on your own site?
I will often post photos that I have taken to my Facebook page (either personal or my fan page). Sometimes these can get lots of likes. I got thinking that perhaps I host these photos on my site (i.e. www.example.com/images/photo1.jpg) and then share that "page" on Facebook. That way any of the likes would be counted towards my site. What do you guys think?
Social Media | | MarieHaynes0