Products
Webtrends Analytics 9.x
Issue
While passing from one page to another, or going from an external site such as Google or Bing, to your own tagged page, the tag becomes inconsistent in showing the appearance of DCSREF in the data collected by the Webtrends java tag. An unexpected amount of traffic is showing your own site as the top referrer or there is an unexpectedly high amount of direct traffic.
Resolution
DCSREF is the parameter value the tag uses to pass the referring page information to the log file. This data shows up as a url in the cs-referrer column of the log file.
For DCSREF to have data, the HTTP Request Header of the current page being viewed must have the referrer in it. However, even when this is not the standard direct traffic actions such as bookmark, typed url or email, the HTTP Request Header may still not have referrer data in it. There are multiple circumstances that can cause this effect.
1. A search engine indexes a redirector page instead of the actual landing page. The landing page is then launched via scripting in the redirector page, not from a link click, causing no referrer to appear.
2. Links on a page are not href links, but rather onclick events that cause scripts to fire. The next page then is treated as a window.open event that has no referrer, again becoming direct traffic.
3. The web site has been altered to wipe the HTTP Response via spoofing.
4. A server side redirect where no actual page exists, the server has been instructed to send a different url.
More Information
While DCSREF is important for any of the Referrer reports and for Search Engine and Phrase reports, it will not impact Path Analysis reports as those do not use the referring url as a source of data.