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
-
Google SERP shows wrong (and inappropriate) thumbnail for Facebook videos?
Hello I'm running into a strange issue with at least one of my client's video. The video is posted on Facebook. When searching for the video on Google, the SERP shows a completely wrong, and inappropriate, thumbnail image. (And in one case the preview video starts playing within Google SERP.) It also seems that Google is indexing various countries' facebook page for the same video separately (it-it.facebook.com, fr-fr.facebook.com, etc). Note that only the thumbnail and preview video within Google are wrong; if you click on the link, you see the correct video and page. I hesitate to divulge the actual client video, but there are some reports on Google's search community about the same behavior: Here's one that stargs back in March: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/33760205?hl=en and a more recent one: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/71452151?hl=en It looks increasingly like a bug in some google algorithm, but nobody at google seems to acknowledge that. I've unpublished the original video from FB and submitted an 'outdated content' removal to Google, which is pending. In the meantime, my questions for our group of experts here: Has anyone else experienced this and any other suggestionso n how to fix? If we assume that this is not a google bug: how could a malicious actor or black-hat SEO influence Google's algorithms to cause this? Thanks, mickey
Social Media | | infamia0 -
Links to Social Media accounts, rel=nofollow/follow and rel=me
Hi guys, I just saw this rel="me" attribute and I can't find any reputable recent (within last year) information. I never heard of this and wonder if it's any beneficial in any way. At the same time, should I use nofollow or follow on links from website to social accounts? I've heard different opinions but, again, no recent relevant and trustworthy information. Please, kick me into right direction. However, when kicking, please give me some proof, rather than thoughts 🙂 Thanks!
Social Media | | DmitriiK0 -
Why can't anyone check in on my Facebook Page?
Once upon a time, we were able to check in at our office on Facebook. Then, one day, we just...couldn't. I didn't (at least intentionally) change any settings on the page. I can't seem to even find a setting for this. What happened, and how do I fix it? Thank you so much in advance. (Edited to include the Facebook URL) https://www.facebook.com/LegacyTravel
Social Media | | cathibanks0 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Youtube SEO: Does your channel name / user name matter?
My predecessor left me a gift of what is arguably the worst kind of Youtube channel name: Our company's name condensed to an acronym with some additional gibberish that may or may not have meant something to her. In short: Our channel name will never be searched for, will never provide any ranking boost. Now our Youtube success has been very marginal so far: 31 subscribers, 7,300 video views. Given that situation, should I seriously consider scrapping my channel and starting something new with a keyword targeted channel name? Or does channel name matter so little that I should hold on to my 7300 video views?
Social Media | | AdoptionHelp0 -
Tool/Method to find users on Twitter from a CSV file
I'm attempting to find users to follow and receive reciprocal follows for a client on twitter. Through the company's newsletter database, I have a CSV file of somewhere in the range of 20,000 email addresses and names. I've been importing them 250 at a time into an empty Gmail account then connecting that with twitter each time to find some of them. However, a lot of the PEOPLE using the email addresses on the mailing list are not on twitter but their COMPANY is. To find the company, I can obviously drop the name@ part of the email and just search by the domain but this becomes tedious real quick since it has to be one by one and cannot be bulk imported/searched. Are there any tools/ideas out there to more easily find twitter users based on a larger set of keywords and/or domain names?
Social Media | | Motava0