What is my referrer?

Your referrer

This will tell you which web page "referred" you here

As you know, when you click a link on a web page, your web browser redirects you to that page. But did you know that when your browser takes you to this new page, it also usually tells the website you're going to which page sent (or "referred") you to it?

This page tells you what your web browser sent as a "redirect" page. If you came from the "What is my browser?" page, it will show our domain name and the path to the page.

If you came to this page from another website, it will show that domain name and possibly the path to that particular page.

In some cases, your referrer will be blank, and we won't be able to determine where you came from. This can be for several reasons.

Why don't I have a referrer?

We can tell you several reasons why you don't have a referrer.

You visited this page directly

If you typed or pasted this URL directly into your browser, you will not have a referrer. This is because you were not actually "directed" here from another site: you came here directly. This also applies if you came to this page from a bookmark.

The website you came from does not share referrers

Websites can now instruct your browser to hide them as a referrer. In other words, if you normally click a link from site A to site B, site B will know that you followed the link from site A. However, now Site A can tell your browser not to share that with Site B you came from Site A.

There are several levels of control: the website can hide the referrer completely, it can report that it was a referrer but hide the actual page they came from, or it can show the full path/page they came from.

You use a browser extension that hides your referrers

You may also have a web browser extension that hides or changes the referrer you send.

We can't vouch for any of these extensions, but here are some examples of such extensions: Firefox: Referer Control, Firefox: Toggle Referrer, Chrome: Referer Control. You can research this if you are interested.

Referrer spoofing, why and who needs it?

Most often, this is done by webmasters who sell traffic, arbitrage traffic or simply cheat affiliate programs.

In this way, they cheat the counter statistics, and the main task is to get search traffic in the statistics.

In addition to referrer substitution, there is also referrer generation. This type of substitution is often used when SEO optimizers cheat traffic, making the client think that traffic is supposedly coming to their site because of promotion.

Why "supposedly"?

Because the presence of a link on the site to "your site" is not always necessary, it may not be there at all, but transitions with such a referrer will provide the necessary information in the statistics counter.