How to interpret referring domains broken down under a tracking ID?
For your information, the tracking ID is tagged with an url posted on facebook and twitter. Using that report, I understand that there are about 26 thousands unique visitors who have clicked that URL that was tagged with that tracking ID. By breaking down for referring domains, I see that about 14.9k of unique visitors came from facebook while about 9k of unique visitors came by typing/bookmarking the url of my website. There are also many other random referring domains associated with this tracking ID.
How could that happen if I put that URL with a tracking ID only on facebook and twitter? How to explain that?
Does referring domain mean an immediate site that refer visitors to my website? Or it means any site prior to landing on my website?
Is it correct that by breaking down a tracking ID by referring domain, what I see on the report is what website led visitors to my website via the URL that is tagged by a tracking ID.
By that, I mean, if I see website A as a referring domain, I can say that someone clicked my URL that tagged with a TRACKING ID on website A and landed on my site.
Another question is, since the URL tagged with that tracking ID was posted on facebook and twitter only. How to interpret the referring domains (Type/Bookmark)?
a) Does that mean they came to my website by typing/bookmarking and later on, they went to facebook/twitter and happened to click that link (with tracking ID)
b) They came to our site by opening the URL tagged with that tracking ID by right clicking and opening the URL in a new tab? (I tried that, and that action didn't pass any value to referring domain variable.)
c) The URL was shared to a visitor by their friend through another medium such as facebook messenger or other messenger. Then, the visitor open the link by copying and pasting on a browser OR clicking the link straightaway.(I tried that, and that action didn't pass any value to referring domain variable.)
d) None of the above
4 questions above. Thank you for reading this lengthy thread. Please the find the attachment to understand better.Thanks!
I did read all the following definitions from Analytics Help Home but don't quite know how to interpret the report I attach with this thread.
Referrers
Displays the domain or URL where your visitors came from before they arrived at your site, the methods visitors use to find your website, and the number of visits to your site that came from these referring locations.
Referring Domains
Shows the domains that referred the customers that most impacted your site’s success metrics. Referrers fall into two main categories: Domains and URLs. Domains refer to the domain name, and appear as the base domain without the query string or subdirectories attached. URLs include the base domain name, as well as any query strings or subdirectories.
Referrer report: Displays all previous URLs linked to your site that do not match internal URL filters.
Referring Domain report: Similar to the Referrer report, it combines all referring URLs to just their root domains.