When clicking a link from another site, the Referer header typically only shows the domain, like `https://www.example.com/`. Recently, a tech team at a news company investigated a sudden surge of traffic to an old article and pinpointed it to a specific post on Reddit, but all they could see was `https://*.reddit.com/`. They were curious about how this was tracked without the full URL unless someone used an extension. How can they find this information so quickly if the link text was simply "this news article"?
4 Answers
Unfortunately, you can't trace it through the Referer header itself if it's masked or disabled by browser settings. Typically, it's the full URL that's sent unless something interferes.
From my experience, tracing traffic spikes can be straightforward. I had a similar situation with an influx from imgur; all I did was search for the title of the content. It led me right to the post causing the spike. That said, this method is quick but not scalable if you're dealing with many links.
It's possible someone used a plugin or a specific browser that can send full URLs. Sometimes, just searching with the full URL in Reddit's search bar can help find posts linking to it, although you can't definitively prove it caused the spike.
The Referer header can actually include the full URL depending on the `referrer-policy` set by the source page. For example, if you check Reddit's requests in the Network tab, you'll find they use a policy called "strict-origin-when-cross-origin" which allows the full URL to be sent as long as the destination site is HTTPS.
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