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A Quick Tracking PSA (4)

12-07-2020 06:48 AM #1 zeno (Administrator)
A Quick Tracking PSA

Hi all,

Just wanted to drop a quick tracking-related announcement.

Recently (a few months ago), a Google Chrome update set their default referrer policy so that they only pass domain, not full page URL, by default when clicking links on pages (well, when the domain changes).

We have seen a lot of customers having issues with listicles/offer walls on our end because the referrer is key to detecting that clicks may be repeats from a previously visited page. It mainly affects this situation, with many clicks opening in new tabs from some single page.

There's a simple fix and I would recommend adding this to your pages regardless of the tracker you use as it will reduce the risk of issues and improve data logging across the board, e.g. if you are check access logs at any time.

Fix: set a default referrer policy in the page directly using this meta tag:

<meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer-when-downgrade" />

Simple. This just reverts it back to what it used to be.

In our SaaS, FunnelFlux Pro, our JS will soon sidestep this issue directly but I still think its worth adding to pages as... well why would you want to ever hide referrer details from your own tracker?

Happy tracking folks.

12-07-2020 10:31 AM #2 jeremie (Moderator)

Thanks!

For those who want more info:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...eferrer-Policy
https://www.w3.org/TR/referrer-policy/

If you are using redirectless tracking, important to note that "no-referrer-when-downgrade" will leak the referrer to the affiliate network.

To test the various options, you can make a link to this page from a lander on your server. It displays the referrer received, so it is good for testing.
https://www.whatismyreferer.com/

Here are the referrer options for you to test with. Just uncomment the one you want to try.

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer" /> -->
    <meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer-when-downgrade" />
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="same-origin" /> -->
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="origin" /> -->
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="strict-origin" /> -->
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="origin-when-cross-origin" /> -->
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" /> -->
    <!-- <meta name="referrer" content="unsafe-url" /> -->
    <title>Test Referrer</title>
</head>
<body>

    <a href="https://www.whatismyreferer.com/">Test Referrer</a>
</body>
</html>

12-07-2020 03:49 PM #3 Mr Baffoe (Veteran Member)

Originally Posted by jeremie

Good point, and thankfully you can also set the referrer policy on the outbound affiliate link even when content="no-referrer-when-downgrade" is set in the meta

Code:

<a href="https://www.whatismyreferer.com/"  referrerpolicy="origin">Test Referrer</a>
<a href="https://www.whatismyreferer.com/"  referrerpolicy="no-referrer">Test Referrer</a>

12-11-2020 11:30 AM #4 voluum (Veteran Member)

For people that are not as technical:

Not adding that line of code to your landing page won't break your tracking if you're using a tracker like Voluum (and probably most of the other ones).

Our tracking logic is not based on passing referrer info (though referrer is used as a fallback when there's no cookie or cep parameter in a click url). If it is hidden, you only risk missing it from your reports. And when there's no referrer data passed, rule-based paths with conditions for it won't work. I agree with Zeno when he says there's no reason to hide it - the more data in your tracker, the better for you - but wanted to make sure it's clear to all.

Karolina

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