What does it mean when a new user doesn't have a referer?

I can't believe a quarter of my new users have disabled referer sending.

[phaze]

I'm getting alot of null referers in my logs. Do that many people really disable referer sending?

[Llama]

Is it a crazy idea that someone could type in your URL, or go back to it a day later?

[phaze]

Well, I suppose so. :)

[Moondog]

I get many null referers too. I have allows thought it was odd.

[phaze]

I guess I'd like to know what assumptions about null referers the high traffic sites make. So one is manually typed in URLs. Another is bookmarked URLs. Another is referer disabling in the browser. Does that about cover it?

[keyplyr]

and bots

[phaze]

sure, but bots don't have cookies, and all these have a valid session (using cookies) that have requested at least 2 pages from us. i.e. no bots unless they support cookies.

[keyplyr]

Well you didn't stipulate they had to accept cookies. I was respomding to:

Does that about cover it?

[hyperbole]

bots don't have cookies, and ...

'bots can have cookies. It just depends on how sophisticated the programmer wants to be with the bot.

[ritualcoffee]

and email links

[PCInk]

...and firewalls can have blocking of referrer (some state BlockedReferrer, others just take it out)