What Is Referrer?

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Let's discuss referrers. No, it's not the person who told you about that new sushi place. It's the technical term for something fundamental in web development. So, what does a referrer mean? It's a piece of information sent from a user's web browser to a website they're visiting. This information tells the website where the user came from or what website or page they were on before clicking a link to the current website. This might seem small, but website owners can use this information. For example, suppose you run an e-commerce website and notice that much of your traffic comes from a particular blog or social media platform. In that case, you should focus your marketing efforts on those channels to attract more visitors. So, how does the user's browser send this referrer information to the website? Well, it's part of the HTTP request that the browser sends to the website when it wants to load a page. The "Referer" header of the request has information about where the request came from. You might be wondering why the word is spelled "Referer" and not "Referrer." The original HTTP specification had a mistake, and it just stuck. Strange, right? Now things get a bit more complicated. Referrer information can benefit people who run websites but can also be a security risk. For instance, if you're looking at a website with private information, keep the website from knowing where you came from. Most modern web browsers let users stop referrer information from being sent to websites, which takes care of this worry. Websites can also add a unique attribute to their links called "rel='noopener'" to stop the referrer information from being passed along. So, a referrer is a piece of information that a user's web browser sends to a website to tell it where the user came from. This can help site owners determine where their visitors are coming from, but it can also be dangerous. As of this, many web browsers let users turn off referrer information, and websites can use unique attributes in their links to stop them from being passed along. That's pretty cool.

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