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
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
-
Way to reset Facebook page Reach sending patterns
I have a client that posts a bunch of really poorly formatted and nonengaging content on her a Facebook business page. This has caused her reach to be very low, despite having 9000 real followers. Due to a history of poor content and therefore low engagement Facebook just does not send her stuff out anymore. Is there a way to change that? I heard you could reset that notion by staying off the page for a couple of weeks and then beginning to post once more with better stuff. Is that remotely true?
Social Media | | Atomicx0 -
Videos perform poorly on facebook...why?
I have a facebook page with 42,000 Real fans. Images, screenshots, links, questions, etc all perform well. But videos get 0 interaction. If I get 5 likes that is saying something. Why would facebook not send out my videos to people? Is there a way to increase them? It is very frustrating to post our youtube videos to get no response. My fans are most 13-30 yr old gamers, so videos should be right up their alley.
Social Media | | Atomicx0 -
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 -
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 -
Changing Facebook Username
HI Does anyone know of any negative consequences of changing Facebook username ? For example i take it all your fans are transferred/you dont lose them 🙂 ? Its just a url change (so links on website etc need to be updated) but thats the only thing that changes ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Has anyone else noticed a dramatic drop in Facebook post impressions?
One of the clients I manage has over 5,000 Facebook fans. Whenever I'd make a post, it usually would get ~700-1,000 impressions. About two weeks ago I did my first promoted post. Ever since then, all the regular posts I've done have only gotten ~100 impressions . . . out of 5,325! I'm wondering if Facebook, once learning that you are willing to pay for promoted posts, secretly lowers your impression count so that you will pay for promoted posts more often, or if the timing of my promoted post was just a coincidence, and everyone started to see a decrease about two weeks ago. Does anyone know what's going on?
Social Media | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Best option for Facebook Page/Usernames?
Hey guys My first post here! currently trialling seomoz and impressed so far 🙂 My question relates to a choice of Facebook page/username for a client whose preference is to refer to their online business name by the domain name, where this business name includes his two most important keywords. So as an example: firstsecondthird.co.uk Now in terms of seo that's fine as search engines factor in keywords in the domain name, and even referring to domain name in website copy does not seem to pose too many issues. However on Facebook I've noticed that if we go with page name of: FirstSecondThird (obsiously we can't add .co.uk - I've used camel case for readability) then when using the facebook search the page does NOT get listed for any of the keywords as it appears it only matches on whole strings. So I'm going to recommend that he changes Faceook page name to First Second Third (with spaces) even though client does not really like this option. Do you guys think that makes sense? Also if I do make that change should I also go with fixed Username of First-Second-Third i.e. with hyphens or stick with one long string i.e. FirstSecondThird, which matches the domain name? Any advice appreciated. PS hope this is under right topic- several others seemed applicable Thanks
Social Media | | redactuk0 -
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
