When analyzing your sources in Cometly, it’s crucial to distinguish between referral and direct traffic. Here’s how Cometly defines and tracks these two types of traffic:
What is a Referral Source in Cometly?
A referral source is the external webpage or platform that sent a visitor to your website. Cometly identifies this by tracking the incoming referrer URL—the web address of the page the visitor was on before clicking a link to your site.
How it works:
When a visitor clicks a link to your website from an external source (e.g., a blog, social media post, or another website), their browser sends an HTTP referrer header to your site.
Cometly’s tracking pixel (installed on your website) detects this header and logs the source of the traffic.
Importantly, the referring page does NOT need to have the Cometly pixel installed. Cometly only needs to be on your site to capture the referral.
Example of a Referral Source:
A visitor reads a blog post on outdoorgearreviews.com (which does not use Cometly).
They click a link to your hiking gear store (yourstore.com), which has the Cometly pixel installed.
Cometly logs:
Referring Host:
outdoorgearreviews.comTraffic Type: “Referral”
This tells you the visitor found your site via a link on that blog.
Here's an example of how this will look in Cometly's user journey interface.
As you can see above, someone was browsing Rewardful's website and clicked a link that brought them to Cometly (Rewardful has a blog on their website about Cometly).
What is Direct Traffic?
Direct traffic occurs when a visitor arrives at your site without a referring URL. This happens when:
They type your URL directly into their browser.
They use a bookmark or saved link.
The referrer header is blocked (e.g., by privacy tools, secure browsers, or proxies.
In Cometly, direct traffic appears as:
Source:
(direct traffic)
Example of Direct Traffic:
A visitor remembers your website’s name (yourstore.com) and types it into their browser. Cometly logs:
Source:
(direct traffic)
Here's an example of how this will look in Cometly's user journey interface.
