Quick answer
In web analytics, a self-referral is a session whose source is recorded as your own domain or subdomain, because a visit was split or lost its original source, so internal navigation appears as referral traffic.
What is a self-referral?
A self-referral is when your analytics reports your own domain as the source of a visit. In a referral report you see www.example.com or shop.example.com listed as a referrer to example.com. Someone was already on your site; the tool lost track and started a new visit credited to "you".
(Outside analytics the term usually means a medical rule about doctors referring patients to their own services. This page is about analytics.)
Why it matters
- One visit is counted as two sessions.
- The second session takes the conversion credit, so the real channel, an ad or a search, looks worse.
- Landing page and bounce reports fill with internal pages.
Five causes and their fixes
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
| Some pages have no tracking code (old templates, a separate checkout) | Install the same snippet on every page |
| A subdomain or second domain is not treated as the same site | Register all domains and subdomains for one site |
| The session expired while the tab stayed open, then the visitor clicked on | Expected; check whether your idle timeout is unusually short |
| A redirect drops the original source or UTM | Keep query strings through redirects; link to final URLs |
| Return from a payment or sign-in provider | Make sure the tool keeps one session across the return |
A sample referral report
| Referrer | Sessions | Conversions |
|---|---|---|
| news.example.org | 1,240 | 31 |
| checkout.example.com | 860 | 214 |
| partner.example.net | 410 | 12 |
Sample data. The store's own checkout subdomain is the "top converting referrer", because the checkout pages had a different snippet. After installing the same code there, those 214 conversions return to their real sources.
Self-referrals in TapCub
Internal navigation, reloading the landing page and returns from payment or third-party sign-in never split a TapCub session, and subdomains of a registered hostname are accepted for the same site. A new session starts only when the visitor arrives mid-session from another external site or a link with different UTM tags. See register website domains and referral traffic.
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