This article applies to:
Symptoms:
- My own domain and/or "no referrer" appears in Top Referring Sites and Top Referring URLs.
- My own domain and/or "no referrer" appears in the Referring Sites and Referring Pages report tables.
Causes:
A referrer is the URL of the HTML page, which a visitor clicks to access a page on your web site. Your own domain or IP address will usually appear in the 'Top Referring Sites' and 'Top Referring URLs' tables within the report, because only the initial hit to your site will log a URL outside of your site as the referrer. Subsequent hits will log URLs from your own site as the referrer, because the visitor is moving from one page within your site to another page, also within your site.
Your own domain or IP address can also appear when only the first hit of a session is recorded as the referrer due to 'IP switching'.
IP switching occurs when a client (visitor) IP address changes when surfing your web site. As a new IP address appears, Firewall Suite will treat this as a new session and therefore look for the referrer of the visit which will be the previous page (of your site) and credit will be given.
No referrer appears when a referrer is not recorded in the log file. This is typically due to users typing a URL into the browser, using your site as the home page for their browser, or by bookmarking your site.
Notes:
ISPs use the technique of IP switching to load-balance their out-going proxy servers and to combat the growing problem of insufficient IP addresses being available.
- This article was previously published as:
- NETIQKB2657
