Th3 Core

HTTPS --> HTTP does not trigger a referral on Google analytics.
Solution: <meta name="referrer" content="always" />

I just learned this the hard way. Angry clients are e-mailing asking where the traffic went.
We added SSL in March. I wasn't aware of the issue. Maybe this will save someone a headache.

More info:
https://vickeryhill.com/blog/google-analytics-referral-data-loss/

On the other side of the equation, most of our biggest referrers are .gov sites and over the past few years they've all been going https. I think everyone is finally trained not to panic when referrals plummet.

>finally trained not to panic

Not ours either.

Thanks, just passed to our GA team and then went all over it. #hattip

meta tag, UTM and all that all assume you control the page on the referring site (as I say, in our case, this is .gov and we don't).

There's nothing you can do on your end to sort this out except go https. That's the real solution. Once you got https, all your referral traffic comes back because the protocols do allow sending referrer data between secure sites. I don't see how that meta tag gets around that problem - it effectively breaks the https protocol.

I'm with ergo...why do you have some http pages if you went https?

I'm with ergo...why do you have some http pages if you went https?

I think it's because they're looking at it from the other side. They control the referring server, not the destination server. So they can add UTM tags, but can't force the destination server to go https

[oops - cross-posted - same thing that Trav just said

These are large real estate companies with tens of millions in annual sales. My contacts are full time marketing managers with their own staff. Most of the industry has gone secure, but there are a couple firms running on island time.