Add every Facebook address in your referral report together, tag the links you post yourself so visits from the app are not lost in direct, and judge Facebook by what those visitors did on the site.

Facebook in pieces

You post on the business's Facebook page several times a week, and you would like to know whether any of it brings people to the website.

The referral report in Analytics lists facebook.com with a modest number. Further down sit m.facebook.com and l.facebook.com, each smaller again. None looks worth the effort.

Meanwhile direct visits, the ones Analytics cannot trace to any source, jump on the mornings you post. That jump belongs to the same story.

Why one site appears as several

Analytics records the address a visitor came from, and Facebook sends people from different addresses depending on where they clicked.

A click on a computer comes from facebook.com. A click in a phone's browser comes from the mobile site, m.facebook.com. Many links also pass through l.facebook.com, which Facebook uses to check outside links before sending people on.

Visits from the Facebook app are the awkward ones. The link opens in the app's own browser, and some of those visits arrive with no address attached. Analytics counts them as direct.

The lines that belong together

The fifth is the one no report can recover afterwards. Those visits sit among people who typed your address or used a bookmark, and only tagging your own links separates them.

Add them up first

In the referral report, type facebook into the search box above the table. Every Facebook address appears together, and their total is what Facebook referred.

Analytics also groups them under Acquisition, then Social, then Network Referrals, where the separate addresses are counted together as Facebook.

For anything more, build a segment of visits whose source contains facebook. You can apply it to any report, from pages viewed to goals completed.

Tag the links you post yourself

The direct visits need a different approach. Add campaign tags to every link you post: three labels appended to the address, naming the source, the medium and the campaign.

Google's URL Builder writes them for you. Source facebook, medium social and a campaign name such as weekly-schedule are enough for a small business.

The tags travel inside the link, so the visit is credited to Facebook even when the app passes no address. Tagged visits appear under the campaign's name as well.

Spell the tags the same way every time, in lower case. Analytics treats Facebook and facebook as two different sources and splits them all over again.

Link to the page the post is about

A post about Saturday's market should link to the schedule, not the home page. Facebook readers are on a phone, mid-scroll, and leave if they have to hunt for what the post promised.

The right page also makes the reports clearer. When each kind of post links to its own page, the landing page alone tells you which post someone followed.

And it keeps the visit short in the right way: one tap from the post to the answer, then a reason to stay if they want one.

A worked example

A coffee cart parks outside an office park on weekdays, at a farmers' market on Saturdays and at events on Sundays. Each morning it posts its location on Facebook, with a link to the week's schedule on its website.

The owner wanted to know whether the posts were worth the twenty minutes they took before opening. Analytics showed a few visits a week from facebook.com and a few more scattered across the other addresses.

Direct visits, though, climbed between seven and eight on weekday mornings, just after each post went up. Few people type the address of a schedule page at that hour.

Tagging the schedule link changed the picture. A month later the tagged visits showed most Facebook readers arriving on phones, reading the schedule and leaving, which is exactly what that page is for.

A smaller group went on to the catering page, so one post a week now mentions catering as well.

Judge Facebook by what visitors did

Once the visits are counted together, look at what they did. Bounce rate alone misleads: a visitor who reads the hours and leaves satisfied counts as a bounce.

Better questions are which pages Facebook visitors read, whether any completed a goal, and how that compares with visitors arriving from search.

A goal is any action Analytics counts as a success, such as reaching the thank-you page after an enquiry.

Analytics can also be set up to log a tap on your phone number as an event, so calls placed from the site sit alongside forms.

Paid posts belong apart

If you boost posts or run Facebook ads, tag those links with a different medium, such as paid-social, so paid and unpaid visits never merge.

Give each boosted post its own campaign name as well. What it brought to the site can then be set against what it cost.

The principle is the one that applies to AdWords: money spent should be measured separately from attention earned, or neither figure means much.

Twitter and the rest

Other networks scatter in similar ways. Every link on Twitter passes through its own short address, t.co, which is how those visits appear in Analytics.

The single link allowed in an Instagram profile deserves a tag as well, since nothing else on Instagram leads to your site.

Links in an email newsletter often arrive with no referrer at all and land in direct, so tag those the same way.

The counter-case

For a business that posts once a month, or whose Facebook followers are mostly existing customers, the exact count matters less than whether the page is kept current.

Small numbers also swing from week to week, so compare months rather than days. Facebook's own Insights cover reach and clicks; Analytics covers what happened on your site afterwards.

If you post regularly, though, add the Facebook lines together, tag your links and judge the visits by what they did.

Before the next post

  1. Search the referral report for facebook.
  2. Add every Facebook line together.
  3. Build a segment for all Facebook sources.
  4. Tag every link you post yourself.
  5. Keep the tag spelling identical each time.
  6. Tag paid posts with their own medium.
  7. Judge visits by what they did next.

Step four is the only one that recovers the app visits. Every other step works with what Analytics has already recorded; tagging changes what it records from now on.

Measuring paid clicks apart from everything else follows the same logic as AdWords and Analytics kept in separate boxes.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Facebook appear several times in Analytics?

Facebook sends visitors from different addresses: the full site, the mobile site and a link-checking redirect. Analytics records each address separately, so one source appears as several lines.

Why do some Facebook visits show as direct?

Links opened in the Facebook app sometimes arrive without any referring address. Analytics cannot trace them, so it counts them as direct along with typed visits and bookmarks.

How do I see all Facebook visits together?

Search the referral report for facebook, use the Network Referrals report under Social, or build a segment of visits whose source contains facebook.

What are campaign tags?

Three labels tacked onto a link, naming the source, medium and campaign. They travel with the link, so the visit is credited to the right place.

Should paid Facebook posts be tagged differently?

Yes. Give boosted posts and ads their own medium, such as paid-social, so paid and unpaid visits are never counted together in the reports.

How should I judge Facebook visits?

By what visitors did: pages read, enquiry forms sent, taps on the phone number. Bounce rate alone misleads on pages people read and leave satisfied.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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