When you want to know where your click traffic comes from, turn to our traffic referrals report. With this feature, you can view traffic referral data from up to 31 days in the past.
To get to this report, go to Reports > Traffic Referrals. You’ll see a report screen that looks like a streamlined version of the Stats Report, with basic options already selected.
This article is part of our Popular Features series.
Knowing About Base URLs
The biggest difference between this report and the standard stats report is “Base URL,” which lets you aggregate your referrer URLs. Referrer URLs for your offers almost always have long entries with a “?” mark in them, like:
http://offers.example.com/ad.php?offerid=50&aff_sub=value&…
The part before the “?” is the base URL, like:
http://offers.example.com/ad.php
The part after the “?” (called the “query string”) changes based on the publisher feeding traffic to that offer, the creative being used, and other parameters you require. By focusing on the base URL, you can quickly see how many overall clicks and conversions you get from a publisher’s site.
Reading Your Results
If you have data for the selected time frame, you’ll see clicks and conversions from your traffic sources aggregated by base URL, offer, partner, or other groupings you selected in the Data section above.
To see individual click and conversion actions for an entry, click on the icon next to its base URL:
This opens the Event Tracer report for that entry, which includes each bit of activity, including the full tracking referrer URL.
Traffic Referrals Metrics vs. Stats Report Metrics
The traffic referrals report only returns information on clicks with referral URLs. But it’s quite common for traffic not to have a referral URL due to various user security and privacy settings or from systems or partners that hide their traffic URLs.
What does that mean for your reports? Those clicks without referral URLs aren’t displayed in the traffic referrals report. Click and conversion metrics in your stats reports won’t always match those in the traffic referrals report since some of your partner traffic won’t have referral URLs.