Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Social Media
    4. Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics

    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.

    Shortcut Link and Referral domain in Google Analytics

    Social Media
    3
    3
    1066
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • JonsonSwartz
      JonsonSwartz last edited by

      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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • FedeEinhorn
        FedeEinhorn last edited by

        You don't see traffic from bit.ly as they actually redirect the user without serving any content, therefore is just a redirection, instead, you should see the actual referrer, facebook, or whatever. However, if you are getting the hit from a facebook page, it is probably an HTTPS page, and therefore, if redirected to a non-SSL page referrer information isn't passed along. However, you could see something like facebook.com/u.php?.... You should use Analytics tracking variables to better understand from which posts are those visitors coming: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

        As for your second question, just like you can interpret the redirection, so can Google or whatever search engine scrapes the page looking for signals. It won't matter if you pass them through bit.ly or services alike, the link ends up in your site (as long as there's a 300 redirection in place, which it is in bit.ly).

        Hope that helps!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • S_Curtis
          S_Curtis last edited by

          On the BItly examples I've seen although the link says bitly.com the referring has a domain of t.co. Have you looked to see if there are any from t.co?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • infamia

            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 | | infamia
            0
          • Tz_Seo

            Pinterest Link Value

            Hello, First of all I know that all the links which come from Pinterest are no follow. However about 4 years ago we made a campaign to pinterest for one of the websites we are managing. Although the thing was going well we had to stop it for various reasons. Right now, 4 years later, this thing has grown big without any move for us! All these years our pins, which were great in many aspects, were continuously reppined. This has lead to the point where the Google Search Console is reporting that about 500.000 links are linking to our website from Pinterest. We know how this has helped us or not concerning the actual refferring traffic from Pinterest but our main question, and this where we want the Moz's community help, is how is this helping from a SEO aspect. Thank you!

            Social Media | | Tz_Seo
            1
          • amichaels

            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! referral.PNG

            Social Media | | amichaels
            0
          • mirabile

            Twitter Analytics: Follower Count & Reporting Inconsistencies

            Our number of followers on Twitter has suddenly dropped (yet not dropped) in a really weird way. Twitter Analytics shows follower counts in two places: Monthly increases in followers, and then also in the Audience Insights tab, where you can see three months of follower counts mapped in a chart. Month-to-month, the total number of followers continues to rise. What’s inconsistent, however, is the total number of aggregate followers shown in the cart. Twitter just dropped our to total count of followers by about 600. But it’s not like we just suddenly lost 600 followers last month (in fact we gained far more than that), but rather that Twitter seems to have adjusted the aggregate numbers across the board retroactively for all months. So while month-to-month continues to show gains, overall, we still went down. The only way we would have even noticed this, by the way, is because we have a record of the OLD total follower count that Twitter had previously displayed as recently as last month. So confusing. We’re trying to figure out what happened, and the only thing that seems to make sense is that Twitter may have done a huge spam account purge, and instead of making it look like we suddenly lost a lot of followers, they just updated the aggregate total # of followers across all time……? [For the record, we do not buy followers, but we don’t always do the best job at blocking spam followers when the do follow us either.] Any advice would be appreciated, thanks. 🙂

            Social Media | | mirabile
            0
          • moonheart

            Question about understanding Google Ranking System

            Hi, I have too many question that I need answer to understand Google ranking system. I have been analyzing different website in different niche, but puzzling to understand how Google rank actually. Some websites have good number of backlinks with good SEO metrics, but some low SEO profiled websiites outrank good sites. I am here with my first question. I am working for one client website who sell sex toys online. So we are optimizing keywords like sex toys, buy sex toys, sex shop, sex toy store and too many keywords to rank on google.ca. My client website is cupidboutique.com. We have some competitors that I want to mention below: 1. PinkCherry: This is one of our big competitor. They have 2 domain one is for US and one is for Canada. Both websites ranking well for different keywords. Basically .ca domain is more successful than .com domain. But I am surprise why Google consider the websites for rank. If you see, both websites are identical, that means both website have same product, same category structure, and the most important all products description are duplicate on each domain. On google webmaster guideline, google mention that if 2 domain have identical content, then Google ignore the duplicate one in ranking. But still both websites ranking for different search term. I compare the SEO metrics of our domain and their .ca domain, there is not big difference. Our websites also have good number of links, good PA/DA, even more good number of social sharing than them. But our rankings are not even comparable with them. They are ranking within 20-30th on Google for different product category keywords, but not our. 2. Hushcanada: This is another website ranking well, but I a surprise how? This website is ranking on very high competitive keyword with very fewer number of backlinks. Their PA/DA, number of backlinks, social sharing all metrics are very few. Their business also established recently that is 2013, which I found through archive.org, whereas our client business has been running since 2003-2004. As a Ecommerce business website their homepage is not showing any product , their catalog can be found under "shop online" page only. There are even some more websites ranking well with very low SEO metrics in this niche. If Google is not looking for these SEO staff, then what other staff Google looks to rank website? Hope I will get some favorable answer of my question.

            Social Media | | moonheart
            0
          • Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants

            Blog posts copied to Facebook or Linked? Any Duplicate Content Issues?

            I wasnt able to find any good answers on this.  I have two separate ecommerce websites, one with a top level blog.  (www.xyz.com/blog) and different website with a subdomain blog (blog.xyz.com)***note on the subdomain blog, although it links to our website.  You cannot directly shop from it.  Until i can make some sort of scraper, its what I have to work with. For quite some time now I have been copying the blog posts and re-creating them on facebook as a Note.  Using the same anchor text/links on facebook as my blog post. Part of the issue is that I want the facebook pages to have some content and not just links.  Both get 2-3 updates per week, 1 of those being a blog re-post. Does anyone know if google or bing considers this duplicate content?  Should I simply link directly to the blog everytime, as a best practice? Any insight on this would be great.  Thanks!

            Social Media | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants
            0
          • pharcydeabc

            Should my small business website link to Yelp?

            I'm kind of on the fence about this one.  Should I include a social media icon for Yelp on my website?  We have great reviews, but so do most of my competitors.  I'd like to share my reviews, but I also do not want to send traffic away from my website to another website (Yelp) that lists my competitors.  What do you think?

            Social Media | | pharcydeabc
            0
          • RobertHill

            Are links from Pinterest 'do follow'/do they have any SEO benefit?

            Afternoon all, I know there is a question about Pinterest that was asked in February but I guess it was a fairly new beast then and people were still unsure about its use for marketing/SEO etc. I run an events business and on our Pinterest profile I tend to pin random stuff I find on the net, themes we are running (directly from our website) and other Pinterest users. I have received several 're-pins' and people are really starting to follow us now. What I am keen to know is whether or not having lots of followers/re-pins on Pinterest has the same effectiveness from an SEO perspective as having lots of Facebook/Twitter/Google+ followers and whether or not these re-pins are 'do follow' links or have any SEO benefit whatsoever? Many thanks Rob ps: Pinterest page is http://pinterest.com/eventa/ , if anyone has any tips on how to better utilize this then that would also be greatly appreciated 🙂

            Social Media | | RobertHill
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.