Attribution
Social referral
Also called social traffic.
Social referral is visits whose referrer host is a social network. It counts clicks from posts, bios, and shares that carry the network's address.
How it is measured
The tool matches the referrer host against a list of social sites. Visits from in-app browsers sometimes carry no referrer, which pushes them toward direct.
Tag the links in your own posts so that tagged and untagged social visits can be separated. Compare tagged sessions with the social referral count.
Worked example
A restaurant group posts a seasonal menu on three networks. Analytics shows 590 social referral sessions. The tagged links in the posts account for 380. The rest arrive from reshares.
The group looks at the direct count on the menu page, which rose by 900 on the same days. Many of those are likely in-app browser visits that lost the referrer. The group adds a tag to the bio link and the next post shows 1,230 tagged sessions.
How it differs
Social referral is visits identified as coming from a social site. Dark social is private sharing without a visible referrer. The first has a label; the second hides in direct.
Common errors
Counting only the referrer. Not tagging bio links. Reading likes as visits. Treating social visits as equal to search visits. Ignoring in-app browsers.
In practice
Tag every link you put on a social profile. Check how in-app visits are labeled. Compare conversion for social visits with other channels before judging the effort.