Tracking issues

[Tamir_Belzer]

Hi, we're seeing a spike in leads that their original referrer is a page on our website (for most it's the homepage but there is a substantial amount of leads with a specific blog post being their original referrer). 

While it makes sense for some of the leads to see an ad our ours or hear about us somewhere and go directly to our homepage, it doesn't make sense for the spiking amount we're seeing and it doesn't make sense that someone will go directly to a specific blog post on our website where the URL is more complicated and specific. 

We are using cookies with hidden UTM fields for all our paid campaigns on all of our forms and it's working fine. I'm asking about all the leads that did not come through paid campaigns but went directly to our website with no other referrer in the way. 

Did anyone encountered something like this? a more than reasonable amount of leads that come directly or without any trace to their website? Is there something we can do that we're not doing to reduce this number? 

Thank you. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

I would start by ensuring you're not losing pageviews entirely because of a bad Munchkin rollout.

If pages don't load Munchkin, they can never be the Original Referrer.

It's notable that you're talking about a single, presumably unguessable (but is it actually not indexed?) blog URL. Does anything distinguish that page from other blog URLs?

[Tamir_Belzer]

Hi Sanford, thank you for your answer. I wasn't referring to a specific blog post, just saying we're seeing quite a lot of cases in which the original referrer was one of our blog posts, not the same one for everyone, various different blog posts. As I said, while it makes sense somehow that people will go directly to our homepage it doesn't make sense that people will go directly to any of our blog posts, meaning no one will type a complete blog URL which usually it's not a friendly URL to type. 

Hope I made myself clear. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

... no one will type a complete blog URL which usually it's not a friendly URL to type.

Who says they're typing it, though? That's why I asked whether the blogs are truly not linked or indexed from anywhere.

In any case what I'd be looking at is your Munchkin rollout. Sometimes (for one example) people try to use GTM and mess up the load sequence.

[Tamir_Belzer]

I guess they didn't type it but if they searched for it in Google than the referrer should have been Google and if they clicked on it in any other site that linked to it than the referrer should have been this other site. In any case if they didn't type it and got to it directly than the referrer should have been different for most cases, shouldn't it? 

I will check the Munchking rollout. Thank you. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

...and if they clicked on it in any other site that linked to it than the referrer should have been this other site.

Only if that site is set to forward referrers. An https:// site will not forward its referrer info to an http:// site, and any site can have its referrer suppressed using a meta tag. In these cases it's the same as a direct visit.

[Tamir_Belzer]

We are an HTTPS site and the Munchkin is directly on the site and not through GTM. 

What else can we do? I mean if sites suppress sending referrer than there's nothing we can do but we are getting more than 40 percent of form fillouts with a direct or unknown referrers, in some months it's even 60 percent. I can get that people uses cookie blockers or sites suppress their referrer but I don't think it will come to 60 percent of the traffic or form fillouts. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

You would have to provide actual URLs for it to be investigated further.

[Tamir_Belzer]

For example this URL: How to Deploy the ELK Stack in Production | Logz.io 

I can see more than a 100 people with this link as their original referrer but again it's not just one specific blog post and it's not even only blog posts, sometimes it's pages on our website, product pages or pricing and sometimes they don't even have an original referrer. 

[SanfordWhiteman]

We are an HTTPS site and the Munchkin is directly on the site and not through GTM.

That's not true, you are loading Munchkin via GTM! Look more closely at your tag config.

Make sure you are loading using the custom Munchkin domainLevel parameter (not just here but on your Marketo LPs or any other pages as well).

Munchkin.init("457-WKE-316", {domainLevel : 2});‍‍‍

More info here: https://blog.teknkl.com/munchkin-2-letter-tlds-broken/