Track visits referred from https?

Support & Bugs
1

Hi Friends,
For a site that used to refer visitors to my site, several times daily, Piwik suddenly stopped reporting visits in Referrer Websites. Since it looks like some other analytics apps on my server also stopped reporting them, I contacted the site. Apparently they went to https.

So now I’m curious why Piwik doesn’t or can’t track visits from https sites? Is there a way to have them tracked and reported? I did search the FAQ and User Guides, but may not know or recognize the right terminology.

Thanks for your help :slight_smile:

2

Piwik can track HTTPS correctly. Maybe make sure that the redirection HTTP -> HTTPS conserves the referrers. maybe it’s not possible though, not sure.

3

I was just reading an article regarding this issue. This may help: Complete guide to Direct Traffic Analysis in Google Analytics

4

Very interesting article, JackieBiz! Thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

It suggests moving my site to https, and then I can get the referrer info. Might be a possibility, I’ll look into it.

Piwik can track HTTPS correctly. Maybe make sure that the redirection HTTP → HTTPS conserves the referrers. maybe it’s not possible though, not sure.

According to the article, https cannot send referrer info to http. That’s what makes https secure!

You said “PIwik can track HTTPS correctly.”

How? How can I make it track?

5

This is a very interesting issue. My site now has https installed and suddenly my “direct traffic” went through the roof. This means that Google is pretty much bundling everything (or most) https as direct traffic. :S

6

My site now has https installed and suddenly my “direct traffic” went through the roof. This means that Google is pretty much bundling everything (or most) https as direct traffic. confused smiley

I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion. My understanding of what I read is that https sites send referrer info to each other, thus, the suggestion to move our sites to https. I’m not sure how google comes into the discussion. (Although I haven’t read the last half of it yet, because it looks like info about how to switch to https, or about what happens afterwards (which I’m not ready to do yet, until I learn more about it).

That’s why I want to understand what mattab said, which was “Piwik can track HTTPS correctly.”

7

[size=large]Truth about direct traffic[/size]
All untagged or improperly tagged marketing campaigns from display ads to emails could be treated as direct traffic by Google. SOURCE: You are doing Google Analytics all wrong. Here is why

[u]Whenever a referrer is not passed, the traffic is treated as direct traffic by Google.[/u]

    [ul]

[li] Mobile applications don’t send a referrer.
[/li][li] word/PDF documents don’t send a referrer.
[/li][li] 302 redirects sometimes caused the referrer to be dropped.
[/li][li] Sometimes browsers don’t pass the referrer.
[/li][li] During http to https redirect (or vice versa) the referrer is not passed because of security reasons.
[/li][/ul]

8

I’m not interested in “direct traffic”. I don’t care how google treats it. This is nothing to do with marketing campaigns, or web ads, and is irrelevant to my question.

What I care about is how Piwik tracks it! The first article JackieBiz referenced says that https can’t pass the referrer to http. But matt says that PIwik can track https. So what I want to know, is HOW?

I want to know how to have https sites tracked when they refer visitors to my site, and so they show up as Referrer WEbsites.

Thanks :slight_smile:

9

So basically, if both web sites use https (https -> https), the referrer will get passed whereas it will get stripped out if it is https -> http?

10

yes that’s correct —

11

Great, thank you for a fast answer!