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Facebook as referrer - another stats mystery

  1. heatherstark
    Member

    I have recently been picking up some traffic from Facebook as a referrer (yay!), but I have a puzzle about how and why this is happening. I know that when I search inside Facebook it will sometimes dish me up some results from outside of Facebook, via Bing. So it could be that this is where my Facebook referrals are coming from. However I am also promoting my current content via my (small but lovely) friends network on Facebook, and via my public profile information on FB. Is there any way of telling apart referrals which originate from Facebook organic search VS referrals from someone who clicks a link they found on Facebook, that I placed there for them to find? Unlike Google referrals, Facebook referrals on WP stats don't list a search term. I'm not sure whether this is because (1) this information isn't passed through by FB, or because (2) it isn't tracked or communicated by WP or because (3) my Facebook traffic isn't actually coming from search on Facebook. Any ideas what's what here? Any guesses? thanks....!

    The blog I need help with is insightanalysis.wordpress.com.

  2. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    Facebook's URLs tend to differ depending who's viewing the post (or share) and how they're viewing it.

    Its not uncommon for the same Facebook post to generate 20 or so unique referrer URLs that actually go to the same place, so we lump everything under "Facebook" to keep your stats from being flooded.

  3. heatherstark
    Member

    thanks! could route it via bit.ly I suppose.....but it's difficult to cross-calibrate...

  4. macmanx
    Happiness Engineer

    You're welcome!

  5. pnaw10
    Member

    I had the same question and found this forum through a Google post.

    While I appreciate the effort to prevent stats from being flooded, I'm often curious to know more about exactly how people got to my site via Facebook. Was a link shared on someone's wall? Was it someone clicking a link I posted myself?

    I understand Facebook's own privacy settings may not allow a stats program to see who's linking to my site, but if there were a way, it would really be more useful than just a single facebook.com "catch-all" entry on the referrer list. At the very least, it'd be helpful to tell the difference between links I posted myself and links other people are sharing on their own walls.

  6. rollermarketingresearch
    Member

    I totally agree with pnaw10. I am seeing more FB referrals but have no way of knowing where in FB they are coming from. What's the point?

  7. timethief
    Member

    Here's the link you can use to contact Staff directly with > http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/

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