Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Social Media
    4. Facebook.com / referral - What is it?

    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?

    Social Media
    3
    5
    9057
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • amichaels
      amichaels last edited by

      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!

      referral.PNG

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • amichaels
        amichaels @max.favilli last edited by

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • amichaels
          amichaels @irapasternack last edited by

          Thanks Ira!

          I sincerely appreciate your response!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • max.favilli
            max.favilli last edited by

            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

            amichaels 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • irapasternack
              irapasternack last edited by

              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

              amichaels 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Muhammad_Jabali

                Facebook adds a trailing slash to urls?

                Hey Guys, we are facing a problem in our www.batuta.com with Facebook shares. Seems like because we choose to set our preferred canonical version urls to end with a trailing slash ( / ), like this one e.g.: www.batuta.com/الوجهات/إسبانيا/ Facebook adds automatically another ( / ) when trying to read the url on first share before its ever indexed in FB. Which makes Facebook think its a bad request! cause then the URL has two // at the end of it. hope this was clear. anyway, so first question: did anybody face this issue before? any solutions? Second, and might be more important: I might be forced to face the option of changing the canonical tags to be a url without a ( / ) if I will have to do this I will enforce a redirect on every url request with an ending trailing slash ( / ) to be redirected to the new canonical version without. will this be enough? how big am I supposed to suffer here? am I facing a long time with double indexed urls? wonder if anybody faced this problem before! Best Regards

                Social Media | | Muhammad_Jabali
                0
              • cathibanks

                Why can't anyone check in on my Facebook Page?

                Once upon a time, we were able to check in at our office on Facebook.  Then, one day, we just...couldn't. I didn't (at least intentionally) change any settings on the page.  I can't seem to even find a setting for this.  What happened, and how do I fix it? Thank you so much in advance. (Edited to include the Facebook URL) https://www.facebook.com/LegacyTravel

                Social Media | | cathibanks
                0
              • RickyShockley

                Where do the Facebook star ratings come from?

                I have a client whose FB page has a 5 star rating (apparently from 5 reviews) but I have no clue from where they are aggregated? I tried Google-ing for answers with no luck! Any idea? This is the page I am referring to... https://www.facebook.com/pages/Partners-in-Womens-Health-of-Jupiter-LLC/310303442400699?bookmark_t=page

                Social Media | | RickyShockley
                0
              • Tech-Critic

                Facebook Blocking Site

                This is been a big annoyance for me. My site was on wordpress before and was infected with malware at one point. We were blocked by major AV, Google, and etc but we got the infection cleaned up quickly and got unblocked. Problem now is that Facebook, we are still blocked on. We try to post a link and says we are harmful. We got unblocked from facebook and we posted but than they blocked us again. We have submitted multiple requests on that form but got no answer. As a marketing agency, having our facebook page blocked to our site is bad. What can we do in this situation? We have no direct contact with anyone at facebook nor do they reply to our requests. I do own a .net to my domain, should we start using that instead of .com or what? We really need to find a way out of this. It is hurting our reputation.

                Social Media | | Tech-Critic
                0
              • DougHoltOnline

                Facebook Pages - Best to have one page or multiple pages when a company has multiple locations?

                I'm working with a business that has multiple locations (13) in several different states. Is it best practice to have one central FB page for the company and/or separate location pages? It's for a self storage company that does not have one central phone number, so each location would have separate information listed on the page. They do have a central website with different pages for each location. I'd love to hear the communities thoughts on the best way to handle this.

                Social Media | | DougHoltOnline
                0
              • JonsonSwartz

                How can I track on my facebook page shared links without using short url redirect service?

                Hi, I wondering how can I track and analyze on all my shared links in my facebook business page without using short url redirect service like: “Tiny” url or “bitly”? Thanks in advance.

                Social Media | | JonsonSwartz
                0
              • DHS_SH

                Diigo.com

                I was using Open Site Explorer to look at a competitors back links and they had a lot from Diigo.com...a site I must must confess to have never heard of before. Diigo seem to have a strong Domain Authority but I don't understand how (or if it is wise) to utilise it to boost the organic performance of my website. My competitor seems to be taking advantage of it to good effect, but I cant work out how! In my mind it is a bookmarking & commenting tool that is geared up towards nofollow link sharing...I must be wrong?! http://www.diigo.com What do you guys reckon? Has any one here got any experience in optimisation via Diigo.com?

                Social Media | | DHS_SH
                0
              • Motava

                Tool/Method to find users on Twitter from a CSV file

                I'm attempting to find users to follow and receive reciprocal follows for a client on twitter. Through the company's newsletter database, I have a CSV file of somewhere in the range of 20,000 email addresses and names. I've been importing them 250 at a time into an empty Gmail account then connecting that with twitter each time to find some of them. However, a lot of the PEOPLE using the email addresses on the mailing list are not on twitter but their COMPANY is. To find the company, I can obviously drop the name@ part of the email and just search by the domain but this becomes tedious real quick since it has to be one by one and cannot be bulk imported/searched. Are there any tools/ideas out there to more easily find twitter users based on a larger set of keywords and/or domain names?

                Social Media | | Motava
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.