What is my browser reporting as my referral source

May 9, 2018 9:10 AM

As I follow a link from one page to another, I'd like to be able to see what my browser is reporting as my referral source. Is there a way to expose that to the user outside of waiting for it to show up in Google Analytics?
posted by willnot to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Do you mean just the URL? If so you can use What is My Referrer. If you want all the information your browser could report, try Panopticlick.
posted by jessamyn at 9:13 AM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

You can also turn on the web console, specifically the network recording, and look through the headers.
posted by spacewrench at 9:43 AM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: This is browser specific. For example, in Firefox, it's as simple as right-clicking on the page you're on, selecting "Page Info", and looking for "Referring URL:". In Chrome, it's buried under View -> Developer -> Developer Tools -> Network -> Headers -> Request Headers -> Referer.
posted by hanov3r at 9:55 AM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

If you want to keep a record of it during a browsing session, you can run through a proxy like Fiddler.

If you want something in-browser that's less clumsy than what hanov3r mentioned, any plugin that gives visibility into the request headers will do.
posted by Candleman at 10:20 AM on May 9, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks spacewrench and hanov3r for pointing me in the right direction. I didn't see any data when opening console, so the other missing piece here was from this page that instructed me to reload the page after opening Network in the console.
posted by willnot at 10:31 AM on May 9, 2018

In any browser you can also open up the Javascript console (in the web inspector) and type "document.referrer".

In fact, if you make a bookmark and make it point to "javascript:alert(document.referrer)" you can see it whenever. (I'd provide an easy link here but it seems MF filters out javascript links.)
posted by neckro23 at 12:04 PM on May 9, 2018