Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Facebook.com / referral - What is it?
-
Hi Moz community!
Coming to you today to ask a two fold question about a mysterious source/medium combination and also social medium data in general.
First question relates to the attached image named 'Facebook Referral.' We've made sure to apply correct tags to all of our campaigns, both organic and paid, and are having a difficult time figuring out where this source/medium comes from which is a bit troubling as it actually has pulled in some revenue over the past couple of months
The second question is around general Facebook data. Our Facebook business manager is vastly over reporting clicks to landing pages. For instance, we saw about 1,700 clicks to site as reported by Facebook business manager, whereas Google Analytics only registered about 950. I know data between the two channels rarely lines up perfectly, but this seems like a rather wide variance.
Can someone help me to understand this, and let me know if there is anyway to reduce the occurrence of one or both of the issues we're facing. Thanks!
-
Ciao Massimiliano!
Thanks for the response here. We have been appending UTM's to our destination URL's, and those seem to account for the vast majority of sessions. However, most of the revenue is attributed to that untrackable source/medium combo.
-
Thanks Ira!
I sincerely appreciate your response!
-
What's the attribution rules you set up in FB business manager? google analytics counts only last click as a click, by default facebook counts any click as a click,
if your site is on http and the user is browsing facebook on https (which most likely is) the referrer header is lost on the click, and you will see the visit as coming from direct traffic, you can fix that just adding analytics tracking parameters to the url you publish on facebook
-
Hi Drew,
This article has the best info on the facebook.com/referral question that I've seen - https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Articles/facebook-com-referral-on-Google-Analytics/ba-p/539366.
As for the discrepancy you are seeing between FB and GA, I've seen similar issues at times - hoping someone else will have some insight into that one!
Ira
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Facebook Page - About/Description/General About/Mission - Questions
Hi, Im just setting up a FB fan page for a client How terrible is it to use clients websites home page descriptive copy as the Facebook page long description ? Language is in Turkish which i don't speak so i'm not able to edit a new version of it just for FB and no budget to hire Turkish speaker to come up with something. So was going to copy & paste but that would be duplicate with HP obviously. How important is it to fill in 'Mission Statement' & 'General About' ? Especially if long description likely to already include that info ? I think long descrip is important for FB pages on seo etc etc but a good one eliminates importance of 'Mission' & 'General About', or is it still advisable to fill these in or are they just extra boxes for flexibility ? I take it when it comes to securing a vanity url (once we hit 25+ fans) for a foreign language version FB page it should ideally be brand name (which includes a keyword) in the local/target language ? The page name is already the brand name in English but since contains keyword is it best to rename into local target language similarly to the url for consistency and local targeting or better to keep one in Turkish and one in English ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Facebook adds a trailing slash to urls?
Hey Guys, we are facing a problem in our www.batuta.com with Facebook shares. Seems like because we choose to set our preferred canonical version urls to end with a trailing slash ( / ), like this one e.g.: www.batuta.com/الوجهات/إسبانيا/ Facebook adds automatically another ( / ) when trying to read the url on first share before its ever indexed in FB. Which makes Facebook think its a bad request! cause then the URL has two // at the end of it. hope this was clear. anyway, so first question: did anybody face this issue before? any solutions? Second, and might be more important: I might be forced to face the option of changing the canonical tags to be a url without a ( / ) if I will have to do this I will enforce a redirect on every url request with an ending trailing slash ( / ) to be redirected to the new canonical version without. will this be enough? how big am I supposed to suffer here? am I facing a long time with double indexed urls? wonder if anybody faced this problem before! Best Regards
Social Media | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
Where do the Facebook star ratings come from?
I have a client whose FB page has a 5 star rating (apparently from 5 reviews) but I have no clue from where they are aggregated? I tried Google-ing for answers with no luck! Any idea? This is the page I am referring to... https://www.facebook.com/pages/Partners-in-Womens-Health-of-Jupiter-LLC/310303442400699?bookmark_t=page
Social Media | | RickyShockley0 -
Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics
Hello, One of my clients has a Facebook page for his company, and his social media manager posts some promotional and educational posts on daily basis. the social media manager uses affiliate ID's in the destination URL to track traffic and leads that come from the social media and to make it look nicer he uses shortcut links service - bitly. Now I have a few questions about this: I don't see traffic comes from bit.ly or bitly.com in Google Analytics, my question: is using 301 redirect makes Google Analytics understand that the last website which sent the traffic to my website is not the actual Referral website? Is using shortcut links in the social media damages the links value (even though they are <nofollow>links - but still considered as signals from social media</nofollow> Thanks. LorS1nd.jpg
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Exporting Facebook Page Likes
Has anyone found a work-around to export the entire list of people how have liked your page? I know this has been on-going problem for people, but I'm hoping someone here discovered a secret method they'd like to share...please. Thanks, Ruben
Social Media | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
We got 10,000 facebook likes overnight from people in another country. WHY? How do I get rid of them?
Our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MobileAttic received more than 10,000 likes over night. We only had about 250 likes prior to this. I know this hurts our engagement numbers as well as limits real customers / community from seeing our posts. Is there any way to get our fans down to a real "non-spammed" number?
Social Media | | jstallings0 -
Is Manta.com worth paying?
Hello, I have currently have a Free listing but Im considering paying the monthly fee. Does it really generate leads? Does it help for link building and SEO?
Social Media | | ogdcorp
If it does, is it wise to link back to the profile page or the home page? Thanks0 -
Is there any SEO benefit to hosting your Facebook photos on your own site?
I will often post photos that I have taken to my Facebook page (either personal or my fan page). Sometimes these can get lots of likes. I got thinking that perhaps I host these photos on my site (i.e. www.example.com/images/photo1.jpg) and then share that "page" on Facebook. That way any of the likes would be counted towards my site. What do you guys think?
Social Media | | MarieHaynes0