Glossary · Analytics & web
Referrer
The referrer is the URL of the page a visitor was on immediately before arriving at the current one, sent by the browser in the HTTP Referer header (or omitted, per the page’s referrer policy).
Referrer data is how analytics attributes traffic to its source: a search engine results page, a social platform, another site linking in, or an email client. It arrives as a standard (if famously misspelled) HTTP header, Referer, that browsers send on navigation — no cookie or script is required to capture it, which is why referrer breakdowns work equally well in cookieless tools.
Referrer data is also increasingly incomplete by design. Modern browsers default to a Referrer-Policy that strips paths and query strings, or omits the header entirely on cross-origin or HTTPS-to-HTTP navigation, for the visitor’s privacy. Analytics tools generally see only the referring domain, not the specific page or search query that led there — this is a browser privacy feature working as intended, not a tracking gap to be closed.
Ciphera Pulse reports referrer sources as part of its standard traffic breakdown, using the same browser-supplied header available to any analytics tool.