Understanding the Challenges of Tracking Traffic from Social Media Apps in WordPress Websites

In the Digital Marketing realm, accurately measuring traffic sources is essential for informed decision-making. However, capturing visitors originating from social media platforms can be tricky, especially when users access links through the native apps in their mobile devices. If you’ve been working on a solution to track social media-driven website visits, you might have encountered some unexpected hurdles.

The Goal: Monitoring Social Media Referral Traffic

The ambition is to develop a tool that enables businesses to see which social media channels are driving visitors to their website. The common approach involves embedding a script within the website’s header. This script can record details such as the social media source URL and a unique user identifier, then send this data to an API for storage and analysis.

Here’s an example of such a script:

“`javascript
(function() {
function getQueryParam(name) {
const url = new URL(window.location.href);
return url.searchParams.get(name);
}

const utm_source = getQueryParam(‘utm_source’);
const referrer = document.referrer;
const hostname = window.location.hostname;

function isExternalReferrer(referrerUrl, currentHost) {
try {
const refHost = new URL(referrerUrl).hostname;
return refHost && refHost !== currentHost;
} catch (error) {
return false;
}
}

if (utm_source || isExternalReferrer(referrer, hostname)) {
const payload = {
organization_id: ‘YOUR_ORG_ID’,
source: utm_source || referrer,
url: window.location.href
};

fetch('YOUR_API_ENDPOINT', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify(payload)
});

}
})();
“`

The Roadblock: Native Social Media Browsers

While this method works seamlessly when visitors arrive via desktop browsers or mobile browsers, it falters when links are opened within native social media app browsers. Many apps—like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook—use embedded in-app browsers that can restrict or block certain scripts, especially those involving cross-origin requests or referrer data.

In practice, this means that when users click a social media link, and it opens inside the app’s built-in browser instead of their standard browser, your tracking code may not execute as intended. Consequently, data about these visits remains un