# No referrers is good news for your website

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2005/10/05/no-referrers-good-news-your-website/
- Published: 2005-10-05T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

![](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/files/images/news/3639.jpg)

Software-generated website visitor reports often include statistics for the number
of “no referrers”, which can often be a high percentage of visitors. This is in 
fact good news in most cases and probably indicates that your organisation’s site
is being returned to by loyal visitors.
A high percentage of “no referrers” in website
traffic logs might be confusing, but is actually something to aim for.

Referrer URLs are listed in a site’s access log whenever a visitor reaches the site
from another such as a search engine or any other site with an inbound link to the
site. In this way you can track where your visitors are coming from. In many cases
this will be from the results page of a search engine.

A “no referrer” entry can occur for many reasons, as described earlier this year
by Dr. Ralph Wilson in his long-standing and useful email newsletter Web Marketing
Today®. It can result from someone manually typing in your website’s URL, by opening
a web browser with your page set as the default opening page, by someone clicking
on a bookmark or favourite in their web browser to visit your page, or by someone
clicking through to your site from your email newsletter.

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Although there are a few other possible causes, the above four all indicate some
degree of positive association with your site. Either your site’s URL is already
stored in someone’s browser, someone is explicitly attempting to visit your site
rather than ending up there by accident, or they have been encouraged to click through
via your email newsletter. At best, a high number of “no referrers” could indicate
a large audience of loyal supporters.

Of course, some of these ‘no referrers’ could be you or your colleagues, especially
if it is your charity’s policy to set up the charity’s website as the homepage on
all staff PCs. So, ‘no referrers’ can only be a truly welcome sign if your site 
is attracting large numbers of unique visitors.

So, how many unique visitors and ‘no referrers’ has your site recorded recently?

 * **[Click Now generates over half a million searches in one month](https://fundraising.co.uk/2005/11/01/click-now-generates-over-half-million-searches-one-month/)**(
   1 November 2005)
 * **[Dogs Trust raises over £3,000 with Click Now search tool](https://fundraising.co.uk/2005/11/17/dogs-trust-raises-over-3000-click-now-search-tool/)**(
   17 November 2005)
 * **[Online shoppers happy to spend £500 on a single item](https://fundraising.co.uk/2005/11/20/online-shoppers-happy-spend-500-single-item/)**(
   20 November 2005)