For a while now I’ve noticed that one on of my blog sites I’m getting referrals visits from a site that has been shut down for over three months…

This had me stumped until I noticed that the number of new visits was flatlined at 0%.

In other words, Google’s referral data is based on either the first site a person came from or the most recent site. I’m guessing its the first site since that’s a fair number of visits to still be having months after the site is shut down. You’d think they’d find the site some other way and if Google showed the most recent referrer the original referrer would be wiped out by now.

If you look at it from just before the site was shut down you can see that there was a fairly precipitous drop, but then the real converts have hung in there (and not cleared their cookies)…

So if you have links from sites that no longer exist - congratulations - it means you have some real converts to your site…

Tags: Google, Web Analytics
Categories: Google Analytics