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.
Losing referrer data on http link that redirects to an https site when on an https site. Is this typical or is something else going on here?
-
I am trying to resolve a referral data issue. Our client noticed that their referrals from one of their sites to another had dropped to almost nothing from being their top referrer. The referring site SiteA which is an HTTPs site, held a link to SiteB, which is also an HTTPs site, so there should be no loss, however the link to SiteB on SiteA had the HTTP protocol. When we changed the link to the HTTPs protocol, the referrals started flowing in.
Is this typical? If the 301 redirect is properly in place for SiteB, why would we lose the referral data?
-
Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking to confirm. And thanks for the tip on HSTS, I'll look into that!
-
Referrer data is stripped when the referral is coming from HTTPS to HTTP. That's a security measure that Google has had in place for some time. Because the link is hitting the HTTP first, it is negotiating its initial connection over an unsecure channel, so the referrer is being stripped. (The incoming connection is being initiated over HTTP before it is ever able to detect and process the redirect.)
So yea, expected behavior. One way around the issue that I'm pretty sure would work is if you implement HSTS for the receiving site. That forces the initial connection over HTTPS regardless of the incoming request's protocol.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
I mean the automatic referrer data that gets us information like what website someone was referred from/clicked from which in GA would show up under the acquisition referrals report. We are not using UTM parameters to designate this traffic. In this case I think the server and browser should be able to communicate that data without dropping it because of the redirect (I know it would get dropped if we were actually going from https to http, but because of the redirect we are going from https to https), but that's not what's happening. The data gets dropped unless we change the link (which redirects to https) from http to https. It's an easy fix obviously, but I'm interested to know why this is happening so we can advise clients on how these issues can be avoided in the future.
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
-
Page Speed or Site Speed which one does Google considered a ranking signal
I've read many threads online which proves that website speed is a ranking factor. There's a friend whose website scores 44 (slow metric score) on Google Pagespeed Insights. Despite that his website is slow, he outranks me on Google search results. It confuses me that I optimized my website for speed, but my competitor's slow site outperforms me. On Six9ja.com, I did amazing work by getting my target score which is 100 (fast metric score) on Google Pagespeed Insights. Coming to my Google search console tool, they have shown that some of my pages have average scores, while some have slow scores. Google search console tool proves me wrong that none of my pages are fast. Then where did the fast metrics went? Could it be because I added three Adsense Javascript code to all my blog posts? If so, that means that Adsense code is slowing website speed performance despite having an async tag. I tested my blog post speed and I understand that my page speed reduced by 48 due to the 3 Adsense javascript codes added to it. I got 62 (Average metric score). Now, my site speed is=100, then my page speed=62 Does this mean that Google considers page speed rather than site speed as a ranking factor? Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/YSxSwOG **Regarding: **https://six9ja.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingsmart1 -
Same person on my site, every day, for over 6 months??
I watch my Google analytics real time while I work and for the last 6 months, I've had one person on my site consistently during every Monday to Friday. It's only the home page there go on, it never shows they look anywhere else. But it's starting to concern me a little since it's been going on for so long. Does anyone have an idea what they could be doing? I do my own SEO, there is no one else working on my site. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Coppell0 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
SEO dealing with a CDN on a site.
This one is stumping me and I need some help. I have a client who's site is www.site.com and we have set them up a CDN through Max CDN at cdn.site.com which is basically a cname to the www.site.com site. The images in the GWT for www.site.com are de-indexing rapidly and the images on cdn.site.com are not indexing. In the Max CDN account I have the images from cdn.site.com sending a canonical header from www.site.com but that does not seem to help, they are all still de-indexing.
Reporting & Analytics | | LesleyPaone0 -
Difference between External Followed Links and Total External Links?
Hello, could someone please elaborate on what is meant by "External Followed Links" vs. "Total External Links"? Does "External Followed Links" mean the number of links that are generating traffic to the site? Or is there some other way to conceptualize it? Any help would be appreciated! Thank you in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | lincolndigitalgroup1 -
Godaddy 301 redirect
Hi, Happy Holidays to all! Although, this is not Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for becoming a member of this site. I ahve learned so much. Here is yet another question hping to have answered by the pundits of this SEOMOZ: I have a site built on site builder and hosted on Yahoo Hosting which does not allow 301 Redirects; I was fortunate enough to have someone help opn this site explain to me how to use Godaddy (they are my domain provide) to 301 through forwarding, work great! My http://domain.com now directs to www.domain.com , the only problem I am having now is, on :sitebuilder" the index page is classified as index.html, thus providing duplicate content again. Can you do two redirects through Godaddy? In othert words, my http://domain.com/ goes to www.domain.com/ eliminating duplicent content, but now I have another URL - http:..domain.com/index.html how do i get rid of that to prevent dup content. Any feed back would be great, Happy Holidays! Jimmy
Reporting & Analytics | | jimmy02250 -
Linking domains vs Inbound Links
Hello, Whats the diference between Linking domains and Inbound links in Open Site Explorer? And also with is most important to analyze? Tks in advance! Pedro Pereira
Reporting & Analytics | | PedroM18 -
Email campaigns. Should I link to my blog or to my site?
I have a client for who we write and post a daily blog article. The articles are optimized and linked to particular targeted content on his top level site. Now we are going to start e-marketing to his 3000+ website users to announce inventory changes and specials. My question is (from a SE standpoint) are we better off linking the e-mail content to the blog and introducing people to the blog (but adding an additional step for getting to the new inventory. Or are we better off putting a link in the HTML E-mail letter that we send out to both the blog and separately to the inventory section? Just to clarify, we wonder if the search engines would provide some additional authority for the extra blog traffic and thereby build the overall score of the blog & site. We are looking at the e-mail campaigns as a potential opportunity to impact SE scores not just awareness of new inventory. Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | webindustry0