Your own domain listed as a referral
Your own domain shows as a referral when a visitor's session restarts on a page Analytics does not treat as part of your site: a subdomain with a different cookie domain, a separate domain you own that is not in cross-domain measurement, or a page without the tag. Tag every page, configure your domains, then list any leftover domains as unwanted referrals.
At a glance
- Where it shows
- In Session source / medium and the traffic acquisition reports, as a row such as example.com / referral naming your own site.
- What stops
- Nothing stops, but the visit is credited to your own site instead of the ad, search or link that brought the visitor.
- How serious
- No penalty. Leads and sales that follow are attributed to the wrong source until it is fixed.
What it means
Analytics normally ignores your own site as a source. Google says it does not count a referral when the referring site is the same domain as the current page or one of its subdomains, or when the visitor moved between domains set up for cross-domain measurement and the page carries the _gl linker parameter.
So a self-referral means one of those checks failed. Usually the visitor crossed to a part of the site Analytics treats as separate, such as a booking or checkout page on another domain or subdomain, and came back. The return starts what looks like a new visit from your own site, and the ad or search that began the journey loses the credit.
What actually triggers it
A subdomain that uses a different cookie domain
Google says self-referrals can appear when visitors move from one subdomain to another that uses a different cookie domain, and recommends cross-domain measurement for subdomains for that reason.
A second domain you own that is not in cross-domain measurement
A booking, quote or payment page on its own domain sets new cookies with new IDs unless the domains are configured together. Google says one visitor is then counted as two users and two sessions.
Pages without the Google tag, or with a different tag ID
Google lists tagging every page as the first way to prevent self-referrals, and says cross-domain measurement needs the same tag ID from the same web data stream on each domain.
A redirect that strips the _gl parameter
Google says a destination page that redirects or does not accept extra query parameters can remove _gl before Analytics reads it, which usually happens too fast to see.
Navigation that runs in JavaScript instead of a click
Google says the linker parameter is added when a visitor's click reaches the page document, so navigation triggered by a script, or another script that stops the click event, leaves the link without it.
Fix it in this order
- In the traffic acquisition report, add Landing page as a secondary dimension to the self-referral row to see which page the visits restart on.
- Confirm that page and the page before it both load the same Google tag ID.
- In Admin, under Data collection and modification, open Data streams, select the web stream, then Configure tag settings and Configure your domains. Add every domain and subdomain visitors move between.
- Click through from your site to the other domain and check that the address there carries _gl. If it is missing, find the redirect or script that drops it.
- If a domain still shows as a referral after that, open List unwanted referrals in the same tag settings and add it.
Google notes that visitors who arrived through an excluded domain before the change can still appear under it, because a later direct return is credited to the last non-direct source. Judge the fix on new visitors.
Lead and call tracking is one of the things we sell, and it goes in before any ad budget is spent. A status like “Your own domain listed as a referral” is the kind of problem we fix as part of it.
Often confused with
A payment processor or booking tool listed as a referral
Here the domain is someone else's, such as a payment page the visitor returns from. Google's answer is the unwanted referrals list, not cross-domain measurement, since you cannot tag their pages.
The session has a source no channel rule recognizes. A self-referral has a clear source, just the wrong one: your own site.
The source is missing. In a self-referral the source is present and names your own domain.