Referrer links are not showing in the Acquisition Websites; Direct Entry is too high

When referrers link to your website using URLs with noreferrer attributes in the link tag, it blocks the sending of HTTP referrer header information. This prevents Matomo from identifying the site where your visitors came from.

If you are wondering « why are direct entries too high in Matomo? » this is one possible cause.

Changing the Referrer Policy in the source code of the referrer page

If the referrer page is something you are allowed to directly edit, you can make the referrer show up in Matomo by changing the referrerpolicy parameter.

Instead of this:

<a href="http://example.com" referrerpolicy="same-origin">…</a>

Consider using either of these:

<a href="http://example.com" referrerpolicy="origin">…</a>  
<a href="http://example.com" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin">…</a>

Campaign tags as a workaround

What if you are not allowed to edit the page which is referring to your site? You can get around this with campaign parameters; follow our directions to make a UTM-augmented link which you can ask the referrer page to use when forwarding traffic to your page.

Simply use the Matomo URL Builder to create campaign tracking URLs or you can log into Matomo and use the built-in Campaign URL Builder tool under the Acquisitions menu.

  1. In a browser, open the referrer’s website and use the browser’s View page source feature to look for the noreferrer attribute in your website’s link tag.
  2. If this is present, open Matomo’s URL builder to construct an URL with utm parameters that indicate the source of traffic.
  3. Provide this URL to referrers to replace on their website.
  4. Matomo records visits from these sites for the campaign name in Acquisition reports.
Previous FAQ: Visits from search engines or campaigns are not recorded, Matomo shows « There is no data for this report » for all Referrers reports.