Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

Not 100% sure how referrer URL is populated with Marketo...so curious to understand.

I was checking out activity history of a lead and found that the Referrer URL on the form fill activity was its own self. I'm sure there is a logical reason for this, but can someone share some words of wisdom if you know why?

The lead went from our .com site to an orphaned Marketo page. Not sure if that matters, but i do see both web page visits logged properly.

5 REPLIES 5
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

I might not completely understand your question, but I often look at Referrer URL for things such as if it came from search engines and pages with parameters. Sometimes I can't see the web activity but the Referrer URL tells me a bit about where the lead came from on our site.

Geoff_Krajeski1
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

You are likely using Forms 2.0.

In this case the referrer (with embedded forms) is the page that the form is submitted from.

Common misnomer in Marketo.

To get the 'came from' page, you are best to employ either JS or server-side code to detect the referring page, if you need that.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

Ok makes sense. Its pretty crazy to me that original referrer populates ok, but referrer URL does not. Guess well go with the JS. Thanks for the solution and answer.

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10 - Community Moderator

Re: Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

The referrer of any embedded asset in an HTML document is the URL of the document, not the the URL of the referrer of the document.

If I go from http://social.example.com to http://www.example.com, the document's referrer (literally, document.referrer) is http://social.example.com.  But when http://www.example.com loads a logo <IMG> from http://www.example.com/logo.png, the HTTP referrer of logo.png is http://www.example.com.  The form logic conforms to this model, even though the form is technically part of the document.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Anyone know why - Referrer URL is its own self on form fill?

Thanks Sanford. Appreciate the technical lesson. Good to know.