How to Find Referral Traffic in Google Analytics (An Easy Guide)

Do you need to find the referral traffic coming to your website in Google Analytics?

Referral traffic is an important indicator of the performance of your digital marketing activities, and thus you need to check it frequently to find out the sources of referral traffic.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to find referral traffic in Google Analytics and how Analytify simplifies finding the top referrals to your website.

Table of Content

• What is Referral Traffic in Google Analytics?
• Why Should You Track Referral Traffic (2 Reasons)
• Method 1: How to Find Referral Traffic in Google Analytics
• Method 2: Analytify Brings This Information to Your WordPress Website
• Conclusion
• Frequently Ask Questions

What is Referral Traffic in Google Analytics?

Referral traffic includes all visitors coming to your website from other websites and blogs. Note that traffic coming from search engines is not included in Referral Traffic. Instead, visitors landing at your website as a result of clicking the links on other websites are counted as Referral Traffic.

To better understand this idea, consider this very common scenario:

An industry blog published an article about the top ten vendors in your niche and included the link to your pricing page in the article. When their readers click that link, they’d be taken to your pricing page. In Google Analytics, all such visitors will be counted under Referral Traffic.

Why Should You Track Referral Traffic (2 Reasons)

There are two important reasons why you should keep a close eye on the Referral Traffic landing on your website.

1. Measure the Impact of Your Marketing Campaigns

All digital marketing campaigns include posting landing page(s) links to external websites and social media platforms.

Once the campaign goes live, the source column of the Referral Traffic is a great way of understanding which external website or channel performed the best in terms of bringing visitors to your website.

With this data, you know which source(s) should you prioritize in your next campaigns.

2. Keep An Eye on Your Link Profile

Your backlink profile includes all the external links that point to your website. Google uses this profile as an important ranking signal for your website.

A good backlink profile consists of links from high-ranking websites. You should also try to remove links from spam websites or link farms (also known as toxic links). The Referral Traffic report gives you a good idea of where some of the website traffic is coming from.

The good thing about Google Analytics is that it records everything, including the number of visitors and where they’re coming from.

Method 1: How to Find Referral Traffic in Google Analytics

Now that you know the definition of Referral Traffic, the next important thing to understand is how you can find it in Google Analytics. It is a pretty simple process.

Note that we assume that you’re already logged into your Google Analytics account.

See The Referral Traffic Stats

Go to Reports and click to expand the Acquisition tab. Next, you’ll see the All Traffic tab, which contains the total traffic coming to your website. Expand this tab to find the Referrals Traffic and click Referrals to see the desired information.

Your report might look similar to the following:

You can see that the report displays the sources of the Referral Traffic, the breakdown of the users, and the behavior of those users (session duration and bounce rate).

You need to give particular attention to the percentage of New Users. These users arrive at your website for the first time. If this percentage is high, it means your website is getting popular in your niche!

Check The Referral Paths

When it comes to Referral Traffic, you need to know the exact source of traffic. If the traffic source is a huge website with many pages, knowing the main domain isn’t enough.

To see Referral Paths, go to the Referral traffic report. Click the link and you can see the Referral Path report. You’ll see the actual path the visitors took to your website.

Method 2: Analytify Brings This Information to Your WordPress Website

Now if you have a WordPress website, you’re in luck because Analytify brings all this information to your website. You don’t have to leave your website and go to Google Analytics whenever you need to check Google Analytics referral traffic numbers.

The plugin is easy to set up and integrate with Google Analytics.

Once everything has been appropriately set up and activated, you can go to the Analytify Dashboard and click the Audience Overview tab.

For further ado, see the screenshot below:

Next, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you’ll see the Top Referrers card.

This card shows the website referral traffic (including the URL and the number of visitors). If you need more details, you can click the button and go to Google Analytics for detailed information.

Conclusion: Find Referral Traffic in Google Analytics or Analytify

Google Analytics tracks and records an impressive volume of information about the referral traffic coming to your website. In addition, it is easy to generate the Referral Traffic report so that you can get the details quickly. This is why how to find referral traffic in Google Analytics is an important skill for digital marketers.

By tracking essential details such as referring domains, referral paths, number of users, percentage of new users, and conversion goals achieved, you can clearly know how your digital marketing campaigns are performing and your website’s reputation in your industry.

If you don’t want to go to Google Analytics whenever you need to check referral traffic, you should try Analytify. This great Google Analytics Dashboard plugin brings the data from Google Analytics to your WordPress website.

Let us know how this article helped you find referral traffic coming to your website in Google Analytics.

Frequently Ask Questions

That’s all for how to find referral traffic in Google Analytics guide. You can also check out How to Use Google Analytics to Increase Traffic and How to Reduce The Bounce Rate.

Not using Analytify yet? What are you waiting for?