Does Referrer "r" change after first hit?

[mjdavid007]

Hi! We are struggling to get our marketing channels right. First, we fixed the behaviour after accepting cookies, which reloaded the page and, as a result, set the referrer to our site, no matter what. That made Refresh Session extremely high. Now, our IT team has made a modification, and Adobe Debugger captures under Referrer ('r') the right referral (Google.com, for instance). However, after the first hit (let's say, a click), that Referrer changes to our site again. So, what we have now is an external Referral (Google) on first page load, first click, but then it switches to our site for the rest of the Visit. Is this the right behaviour? We know that Referral captures "where the visitor comes from", but we are concerned this will set all Visits' marketing channel to Typed/Bookmarked (which, indeed, is like 40% of our traffic now). 

We thought the referral should remain for the Visit (unless the Visitor, within the same Visit time, comes from a different external site).

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

[pradnya_balvir]

Within the Analytics interface, you must configure your report suite’s Internal URL filters. Failure to configure internal URL filters can either include internal domains or prevent external domains from appearing.

[mjdavid007]

We already had our Internal URL filters, so unfortunately that does not solve our issue. Thanks anyway!

[Josh__Stephens]

hi @mjdavid007  - I'd suggest double checking your internal URL filters.  Also verify that the following option is checked in all you marketing rules where appropriate.  

This page might also be helpful. 

[yuhuisg]

What you're observing about the "r" query is correct. The "r" query gets its value from the browser's document.referrer string. The browser itself always sets this string to the previous page that the user had clicked from. This is done exactly correctly in terms of the defintion of what a "referrer" is, i.e. the URL that the user had come from, regardless of the domain.

[mjdavid007]

Thanks for the answer. So this behavour would not change also Marketing Channels? Wouldn't it set all Visits with more than one page to Typed/bookmarked?

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

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@mjdavid007 wrote:

So this behavour would not change also Marketing Channels?

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Correct.

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@mjdavid007 wrote:

Wouldn't it set all Visits with more than one page to Typed/bookmarked?

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The reason is because of the Internal URL filter setting in your Adobe Analytics report suite configuration. This setting informs Analytics about what URLs to be considered as internal, i.e. your own website URLs. In that way, Analytics is able to distinguish referrers that are not coming from your website, which is what we as analysts ultimately want.

That is also why, as @Josh__Stephens indicated in his reply, you have to ensure that the "Ignore hits matching Internal URL filters" is selected in your Marketing Channel Processing Rule for your Referral channel.

[MedicareSupport]

@yuhuisg Informative and Useful 

Thanks for Sharing info!

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