Referral is when one web site sends a visitor to another web site. For example, if someone clicks on a link on a search engine result page and lands on that new web page, for analytical purposes we would say they were referred by that search engine. Measuring referrals is an important metric for knowing which search engines are driving traffic to a particular web site.

Search engine referral is a referral that came from a search engine. When measuring traffic to a website, many Webmasters, search engine marketers or website owners will look at organic search referrals as well as paid search referrals. Important referrals for measuring your online marketing campaign include:

• Total Search Referrals
• Total Organic Search Referrals
• Total Sponsored (or paid) Referrals
• Total Google Organic Referrals
• Total Yahoo Organic Referrals
• Total MSN/Live Search Organic Referrals
• Total ASK Organic Referrals
• Total AOL Organic Referrals
• Total Google Paid Referrals
• Total Yahoo Paid Referrals
• Total Microsoft Paid Referrals