What is ref?

Who adds it

Several publishing tools add a plain ref parameter instead of UTM tags. Ghost's outbound link tagging adds ?ref= with the linking site's domain to links that point to other sites.

What it means

It names the site that sent the visit, much like utm_source does. It lines up with the referrer the same visit carries when the browser sends one, and fills the gap when it doesn't.

What to do with it

Ghost itself also reads ref, source or utm_source as a custom source on incoming links. Treat a ref value as the sender's label for itself.

How Vireo shows it

Vireo doesn't record ref. Vireo Pro's UTM campaigns card reports utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign only.

In the free plugin, Vireo drops the query string from page addresses, keeping only a few WordPress ones such as p and page_id, so a tagged URL counts as the same page as the untagged one. The visit is counted under the referrer it arrived with.

See Referrers and sources in the docs.

Sources

outbound links will automatically include a query parameter showing your site as the referrer.

Member sources - Ghost

add one of the following query parameters to the URL that links to your site: ref , source , or utm_source.

Member sources - Ghost