: Why do I get "irrelevant" URLs in the full referrer field in google analytics? When looking in Google Analytics for referrers to a specific page, I use the following: Navigate to Behaviour

@Jessie594

Posted in: #Analytics #GoogleAnalytics #Seo #WebTraffic

When looking in Google Analytics for referrers to a specific page, I use the following:


Navigate to Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages
Search and select the page that I need.
Secondary dimension > Behaviour > Full Referrer


In the results, I get certain URLs which refer to specific pages that do not have links to the page I have chosen (what I am calling "irrelevant", there would be a better term for this). The URLs are usually content from other sites that do refer traffic to my site, but not links specifically from the page listed in the Full Referrer results (i.e. that site does link to another page on my site).

For example, one of the URLs is from click tracking from my EDM system for an email sent before this page existed, so it's not possible for it to have a link to this new page on it, but the EDM system has got links to the page in later emails.

Does this problem mean that the results are unreliable, or is there an additional interpretation that I need to apply to the results. For example, should I interpret that the visitor went to my site from that referral URL and then subsequently navigated to the specific page?

Another referral report I use for the same purpose is to select in Step 3 (above) Secondary dimension > Aquisition > Source/Medium which gives the domain of the referral site rather than the full URL.

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