So. You know how we're always on your case to measure your marketing? Get in good with your analytics ? Evaluate what's working, and what's not, so you can spend your time and dollars more wisely?


Access Now: 21 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in 2021


What Your Website Sources Really Mean

1) Organic Search




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2) Referrals

Referrals is one of those source names that could mean a lot of things, because the definition of it is simply ... any website sending traffic your way via an inbound link. Pretty vague, eh? Depending on the software or tool you're using to track the sources of traffic to your site, what's included under this might vary.

For example, sometimes this could include social media websites, sometimes it might not -- in HubSpot's software , social media websites are not included in referral traffic because they're included in a separate "social media" bucket. Another instance of variance is whether subdomains are included -- HubSpot software, for example, includes subdomains (like as a traffic source under Referrals. And sometimes it's not that tricky -- you'll always see third-party domains, like, for instance -- right under here. This is particularly helpful if you're trying to ascertain which web properties are great for co-marketing, SEO partnerships, and guest blogging opportunities.

Whatever tool or software you use to measure referrals, just be sure you sort out exactly what is bucketed under it.

3) Social Media


Remember that social media as a source could include more than just Facebook and Twitter, too. There are sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Squidoo, even HootSuite that might be bucketed under here! Be sure to confirm with your software provider what social media sites are included under social media as a source.

4) Email Marketing


5) Paid Search


6) Direct Traffic

Direct traffic refers to traffic you receive to your website that doesn't come through any other channel. So, when you type into your search bar and hit 'Enter,' you're accessing via direct traffic. If someone posted a link to on Facebook, however, and you clicked on that link, your visit would be bucketed in's social media sources.

Make sense?

To sum it up, there is no referring URL when someone reaches your site via direct traffic. So if your direct traffic is going up each month, that means more and more people know you by name. Good job, branding team!




7) Other Campaigns

Finally, if you're running some other kind of marketing campaign for which you've generated a tracking URL, but does not fit into any of the other buckets, you might find it ends up in a nebulous "Other Campaigns" source. Hey, just because it doesn't neatly fit into another bucket doesn't mean it shouldn't be tracked, right?

How do you bucket your website's traffic sources?

Image credit: Daniel Wehner

SEO Myths

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Originally published Jan 2, 2013 9:00:00 AM, updated June 27 2019


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