Google Analytics: Referrals Showing Up As Directs

Why is this?

[Pinchy]

Hi there,

I have a couple of really good links that are sending a fair amount of traffic my way but in Analytics, they don't show as a referral URL. I know these are referrals because they show up on the (very meagre) web stats my hosting company provides.

Why wouldn't they be recorded as referrals in Google Analytics?

Thanks in advance!

[Pinchy]

Is this a really stupid or really difficult question? Just hoping for a bit of clarification.
Thanks!

[cgrantski]

... possibly because your hosting stats are based on logs and GA isn't .,. and logs would contain visits coming from spiders and bots. Only thing I can think of.

[arieng]

Have you gone to the web pages and looked at the links? I'm pretty sure GA still won't track a javascript link as a referral.

[cgrantski]

arieng - that's true, but the same will happen in server logs, won't it? It's not a matter of Google not tracking it, it has to do with browsers not retaining it. IE, anyway.

[arieng]

Good point! We're getting into increasingly unlikely scenarios, but could it be related to session timeouts? On second thought, that doesn't add up either.

Could be a Google issue I guess. I know that they've been reporting all of my Cuil traffic as 'referral' rather than 'organic'. ;)

[Pinchy]

I've gone to the pages and clicked the links myself. The visit is recorded on GA - just as a direct visit, not as a referral.

With my host stats I can click on 'top referrals' and see that the links are being clicked.

[cgrantski]

What browser did you use to do that, Pinchy?

IE drops the referrer if the link opens in a new window. Safari and FF do not (usually). So your host stats could be showing just activity for Safari or FF. If you used IE for your experiment, then it's likely that your host stats showed your visit as direct, also. And that the link clicking activity you're seeing comes from Safari and FF people.

Plausible?

[Pinchy]

That makes sense and is entirely plausible...
But why doesn't GA acknowledge the referral at all?

[cgrantski]

Um, good point. I'm going to fall back on my bots and spiders explanation. But my whole explanatory structure for this is starting to crumble ...

[Pinchy]

Oh well - thanks for trying to solve the mystery!

[wintom]

Good point! We're getting into increasingly unlikely scenarios, but could it be related to session timeouts? On second thought, that doesn't add up either.

[wintom]

I have the same problem,do you resolve it?

[edited by: engine at 9:22 am (utc) on Feb. 27, 2009]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks [/edit]