I’m using this plugin but it does not pick up every source. What’s a better way to capture the referrer?
The reason that plugin is missing sources isn’t actually a bug with the plugin itself—it’s because modern browsers, privacy extensions, and apps actively strip out or block referrer data nowadays to protect user privacy. If someone clicks a link from an HTTPS site to an HTTP site, or comes from a mobile app (like Facebook or Slack), the browser just wipes the referrer completely blank.
If you want to track where people are coming from reliably, relying on the browser’s raw referrer string just doesn’t work anymore.
Here are the workarounds depending on what you’re trying to track:
If you’re tracking marketing, ads, or social media: You need to use UTM parameters. It’s what Google Analytics and everyone else uses because it’s 100% reliable. Instead of sharing a raw link, append tracking to the end of your URLs when you post them elsewhere, like: yourapp.com/?source=facebook. In Bubble, on the page load workflow, you can grab this instantly using Get data from page URL → Parameter (type in “source”) and save it to your database.
If you’re tracking traffic within your own app: If you just want to know what page a user was on inside your Bubble app before they got to the current page, don’t use a referrer plugin at all. Just use the “Go to page” action and utilize the Send extra parameters to the page option (e.g., key: from, value: dashboard). Then read it on the next page using the URL data expression.
If you absolutely need organic referrers (like a random blog linking to you): Keep using a plugin, but just know you’re only ever going to capture about 50-60% of the data because of modern browser privacy limits. There isn’t really a way to code around a browser that refuses to hand over the data.
Can you share the actual URL you’re testing with?
The “source” or “path” URL parameter will only return a value if that parameter actually exists in the URL (for example: yourapp.com/page?source=facebook or yourapp.com/page?path=blog).
Hi Nith,
Here is a FB link, click on thewisebuilder.org.
Christian Homeschoolers of the Front Range | Facebook
When it arrives at my homepage, the address bar shows as: https://thewisebuilder.org/
The referrer plugin shows the source as FB,
but it does not show in the get path…
Obviously the source comes across somewhere but I don’t know how to access it.
“Get path from page URL” will only return a value if the URL actually contains that parameter. For example:
https://thewisebuilder.org/?path=facebook
In your example, the URL is simply:
So there is no “path” parameter for Bubble to read, which is why it returns empty.
If your goal is to reliably track Facebook traffic, the easiest approach is to use a tagged URL in Facebook, such as:
https://thewisebuilder.org/?path=facebook
Then you can read the value using “Get path from page URL” and store it in your database.
I realize the url APPEARS to be simply https://thewisebuilder.org/.
However, the Referrer plugin shows the referrer as Facebook as shown above.
So, how does the referrer plugin get the referral source if there is no referral source in the simple url? Now that’s a puzzle!