Referral traffic

Analytics splits arrivals by where they came from. Referral covers anyone who clicked a link on another property, so a mention in a newsletter, a Reddit comment, a Discord post or an embedded player all land here. Search and direct arrivals are counted separately. The referrer is passed along by the browser, which is why the picture is always incomplete: links opened from apps, messaging clients or documents often arrive with nothing attached and get filed as direct. Treat a jump in direct traffic straight after a big mention somewhere as referral in disguise.