Traffic & Channels
Referrer
The source URL/page that referred a visitor to the current page.
The referrer is the source URL or page that referred a visitor to the current page, passed in the HTTP Referer header and readable by analytics, trackers and advertisers. It is one of the oldest attribution signals on the web — the raw technical answer to 'where did this click come from.'
Buyers deal with referrers in two directions: analytically, referrer data in a tracker exposes which pages and placements actually send traffic; operationally, advertisers and ad platforms inspect referrers to police traffic sources. That is why referrer cleaning or spoofing appears in grey-hat flows where the real source is not allowed. Note that HTTPS transitions, privacy policies and in-app browsers often strip the referrer, so 'empty referrer' rarely means direct traffic.
In buyer speech
“The advertiser flagged our traffic because the referrer showed a doorway page — we need a cleaner redirect chain before Monday.”