question Redirections from domains to website is Direct or Referral channel of traffic in Google Analytics?

[Igor Mironyuk]

I have website www.nikolaevinpictures.com And my 3 domains I put for redirections to my website. In Google Analytics and SimilarWeb this is Direct or Referral channel of traffic?

 

[Sinfully Wicked]

Referral traffic as it's being referred from those domains.

 

[Igor Mironyuk]

Referral traffic as it's being referred from those domains.

and displayed as nikolaevinpictures.com/ Referral?

 

[enlytend]

Browser redirects (like a javascript redirect) show as referrals. Not true for server side redirects.

A server side redirect (htaccess or via the domain registrar) shows up as whatever channel the original referrer to the requested page was, so it could show up in any channel.

Ex.
Page a is 301 redirected to page b.
A clicked link on site x to page a will show up as a referral visit from page x to page b
A search result for page a will track as an organic search.
A direct visit to page a will track as direct.

Makes sense if you think about it. You wouldn't want a rebrand of your site to eff up all your attribution data for ongoing references to the old site. And it would make a total mess out of canonicalizing your site versions (i.e. Redirecting www to non-www) if it called them all referrals!

If you need to know which redirected domain sent the traffic, use utm parameters when you set up the redirect.

 

[Igor Mironyuk]

If you need to know which redirected domain sent the traffic, use utm parameters when you set up the redirect.

What is utm parameters?

 

[enlytend]

Parameters you add to a URL which Google Analytics can read and use to differentiate. Used a lot for ad campaigns, so you can tell which campaign variant sent traffic.
I'm on mobile and in a meeting , but there are articles explaining it better, and google has a URL builder.