What is referral traffic?

​​Referral traffic is visitors that come to your site from another site, not search engines or direct visits. It happens when a user clicks on a link to your site from another website, like a blog, news article, social media, or online directory. Referral traffic is valuable because it means other websites are linking to your content and increasing visibility and traffic.

For example, if someone writes a blog post about the best restaurants in your city and links to your restaurant’s website, anyone who clicks that link and visits your site is referral traffic. Websites often look at their referral traffic to see where visitors are coming from and which sources are driving the most valuable leads or customers.

Here’s how to see your referral traffic data:

  1. Log into your GA4 property, go to the ‘Reports’ section, and navigate to ‘Acquisition’ then ‘Traffic acquisition’. 
  2. Click the plus icon near the top of the report.
  3. Add ‘traffic source’ and ‘session source’ dimensions.
  4. Search for ‘referral’ to focus on referral data, showing the domains linking to your site.
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