List unwanted referrals in GA4
In this guide, you will learn about unwanted referrals and how to exclude them in GA4.
What is referral traffic?
Referral traffic refers to the visits that a website receives from other websites. This type of traffic is often tracked in web analytics as it can provide valuable insight into the sources of traffic to a website.
For example, if a website receives a lot of referral traffic from social media websites, it may indicate that the website’s content is being shared frequently on social media. On the other hand, if a website receives referral traffic from other websites in the same industry, it may indicate that the website has formed partnerships or collaborations with other industry websites.
What are unwanted referrals in GA4?
In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), “unwanted referrals” refer to traffic that is coming to your website from sources that you do not want to include in your analysis. This could include traffic from spammy or low-quality websites or traffic that is coming from sources with that you have no relationship.
What are the referrals that you might want to think about removing?
- Your own website
- Websites that accept payments from outside parties, such as Paypal, Stripe, etc.
- Any websites that are a part of your personal network, such as a domain used for account management, password recovery, etc. Although they may belong to distinct domains, they are a part of the user journey on your website.
How to configure a List of unwanted referrals in GA4?
STEP 1: Go to Admin.
STEP 2: Go to Data streams.
STEP 3: Select your Data stream.
STEP 4: Click on ‘Configure tag settings’.
STEP 5: Click on ‘Show all’ and select ‘List unwanted referrals’.
STEP 6: Enter the domains you want to exclude as referrals and click save.
The unwanted domains have been successfully added to the referral list. The added domains traffic will no longer be seen as referral traffic.