What is Traffic Sources?

Traffic sources shows the referrers that brought people to your site.


Summary

Your Traffic sources Summary, or dashboard, shows you data for each of the following metrics:

  • Initial traffic sources
  • External referring domains
  • External referring pages
  • Search engines
  • Referring social media
  • Direct traffic
Traffic sources summary

External Referring Domains

External domains that have referred visitors to your website. This will include any site outside your website within or outside the wfu.edu domain.

External referring domains

External Referring Pages

Pages on external domains that have referred visitors to your website. It is not uncommon to see just the domain of another referrer listed here since many times a visitor will land on the homepage of another site and navigate to your site through that page’s navigation or click on a link on that page.


Social Media

Social Media platforms that have referred visitors to your website. This happens when a visitor clicks a link included as part of a description, post, or reply on a social media site that takes them to a page on your site. If you have an active social media account and use it to drive traffic to your website, this data is helpful in determining how many visitors engaged with your account or a specific social post.

Social media

Search Engines

Search engines that have referred visitors to your website.

Search engines

Direct Traffic

Entry pages for the visits that have started through a direct entry to your website and not through an external referrer or search engine. Examples of direct traffic would include someone who gets to page on your site through a bookmark or types in the exact URL of a page into their web browser.

Direct traffic