Traffic Attribution for Universal Links

Question

Created Oct ’16

Replies 5

Boosts 0

Views 5.7k

Participants 8

I would really like to turn on Universal Links for our app, but our SEO team keeps preventing us from doing it. They say, they need to know where traffic is coming from. For example, when a user opens Google in Safari and finds our URL, and taps it, they want to know he came from Google.

(Btw. Our app is a wrapper for a website, however with features not available to mobile web users - not sure if that is relevant.)

Is there any way in iOS to get a URL, or any other traffic source information at all, that would allow us to track where app users are coming from?

Answered by Documentation Engineer in 187589022

Not unless you can encode that into your URLs that wind up showing up in Google results. There is no referrer information passed to an application when a universal link is activated. If this is important to your use case, please do file a bug report and include details of what you're looking to do.

Boost

Answer 1

Documentation Engineer OP

Apple

Oct ’16

Accepted Answer

Not unless you can encode that into your URLs that wind up showing up in Google results. There is no referrer information passed to an application when a universal link is activated. If this is important to your use case, please do file a bug report and include details of what you're looking to do.

0

Answer 2

strawberry114 OP

Aug ’20

Hi,

as I'm facing the very same dilemma, I was wondering if 3 years later there is a way now to properly attribute universal link clicks (in Organic Search Results) ?

Thanks

0

Answer 3

streetlight OP

Aug ’20

Is using the referrerURL NSuseractivity an option?

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsuseractivity/2875762-referrerurl

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/allowing_apps_and_websites_to_link_to_your_content/supporting_universal_links_in_your_app

0

Answer 4

Moris98 OP

May ’23

Hi,

From the Safari app on my iOS device I see the NSUserActivity.referrerURL is populated.

On the other hand, when using Chrome/FireFox app I don't see this param(it is nil).

Can someone explain?

Is there any workaround?

Thanks, Moris.

0

Answer 5

anthonyrn OP

Jul ’23

For people that are receiving nil values, it is probably depending what policy rule is used by your source website.

I invite you to read my answer here

0