I'm a writer frequently posting links from my site on Facebook. Recently I noticed that Google Analytics is showing hundreds of sessions for a single page coming from Facebook, however that link was never posted it there in the first place.
The link does exist in my website, but I have never posted it on social media, so why is it showing as referred from Facebook?
Any thoughts on why this is happening?
(I apologize if it is too obvious, I'm not an advance Google Analytics user and I haven't found the answer online)
Thank you so much!
This happens because the Google Analytics traffic source attribution model is last click non-direct.
This is a model that attributes the current session (and possibly the conversions recorded during it) to the last source recorded by that user EXCEPT if this occurs due to direct traffic.
So if a user last landed on your site from Facebook, Google Analytics will remember this when the user come back next time. Considering that the user now knows your website, he may have returned to your site by writing the URL in the browser bar or from bookmark. In this case its source would be Direct, for this reason (given that the attribution model is last click if not direct) it will consider the source of the last session which is not direct traffic (if it exists), which in the case described is Facebook.