Referrers, links, and cross-navigation events

Understanding how users arrive at your pages and navigate between them is essential for analyzing traffic sources, marketing effectiveness, and user journeys. Snowplow captures referrer information, deep link data, and link click events to give you a complete picture of cross-page and cross-app navigation.

Referrer atomic event property

Some Snowplow trackers can populate the page_referrer atomic event property. This field captures the URL of the page that referred the user to the current page.

This table shows the support for page referrer tracking across the main client-side Snowplow tracker SDKs. The server-side trackers don't include referrer tracking.

Tracker	Supported	Since version	Auto-tracking	Notes
Web	✅	0.1.0	✅	Automatic for all page view events
iOS	✅	3.0.0 (deep link events), 4.1.0 (deep link entity)	❌	Based on Deep Link events
Android	✅	3.0.0 (deep link events), 4.1.0 (deep link entity)	❌	Based on Deep Link events
React Native	✅	1.1.0	❌	Based on Deep Link events
Flutter	❌
Roku	❌
Google Tag Manager	✅	v3	✅	Automatic for all page view events

The web trackers automatically populate the page_referrer atomic event property in all page view events.

Deep links for mobile

Deep links are URLs or hyperlinks that take users directly to a particular location within a mobile app. They're received by the mobile operating system and passed to the related app.

Most events tracked on mobile unsurprisingly don't include webpage atomic properties. However, the mobile trackers can capture both the URL of the deep link and the referrer URL (if available).

You'll need to manually track any received deep links, using the deep_link_received event.

The deep_link_received event, as well as the first subsequent screen view event, include the page_url and page_referrer atomic event properties.

deep_link_received

Event

Represents a deep-link received in the app.

Schema URIiglu:com.snowplowanalytics.mobile/deep_link_received/jsonschema/1-0-0

Example

json
{
  "url": "https://example.com/notes/123",
  "referrer": "https://snowplow.io"
}

Properties and schema

Table
JSON schema

Property	Description
`url` string	Required. URL in the received deep-link
`referrer` string	Optional. Referrer URL, source of this deep-link

json
{
  "$schema": "http://iglucentral.com/schemas/com.snowplowanalytics.self-desc/schema/jsonschema/1-0-0#",
  "description": "Represents a deep-link received in the app.",
  "self": {
    "vendor": "com.snowplowanalytics.mobile",
    "name": "deep_link_received",
    "format": "jsonschema",
    "version": "1-0-0"
  },
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "url": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "URL in the received deep-link",
      "format": "uri",
      "maxLength": 4096
    },
    "referrer": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Referrer URL, source of this deep-link",
      "format": "uri",
      "maxLength": 4096
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "url"
  ],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

Warehouse query

Snowflake
BigQuery
Databricks
Redshift & Postgres

sql
select
unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_mobile_deep_link_received_1 deep_link_received_1
from
atomic.events
where
events.collector_tstamp > getdate() - interval '1 hour'
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'deep_link_received'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.mobile'

sql
select
unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_mobile_deep_link_received_1_0_0
from
PIPELINE_NAME.events events
where
events.collector_tstamp > timestamp_sub(current_timestamp(), interval 1 hour)
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'deep_link_received'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.mobile'

sql
select
unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_mobile_deep_link_received_1
from
atomic.events events
where
events.collector_tstamp > timestampadd(HOUR, -1, current_timestamp())
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'deep_link_received'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.mobile'
and unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_mobile_deep_link_received_1 is not null

sql
select
"deep_link_received_1".*
from
atomic.events events
join atomic.com_snowplowanalytics_mobile_deep_link_received_1 "deep_link_received_1"
  on "deep_link_received_1".root_id = events.event_id and "deep_link_received_1".root_tstamp = events.collector_tstamp
where
events.collector_tstamp > getdate() - interval '1 hour'
and "deep_link_received_1".root_tstamp > getdate() - interval '1 hour'
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'deep_link_received'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.mobile'

The tracker will automatically add this deep_link entity to the next screen view event after tracking the deep_link_received event.

deep_link

Entity

Entity that indicates a deep-link has been received and processed.

Schema URIiglu:com.snowplowanalytics.mobile/deep_link/jsonschema/1-0-0

Example

json
{
  "url": "https://example.com/notes/123",
  "referrer": "https://snowplow.io"
}

Properties and schema

Table
JSON schema

Property	Description
`url` string	Required. URL in the received deep-link
`referrer` string	Optional. Referrer URL, source of this deep-link

json
{
  "$schema": "http://iglucentral.com/schemas/com.snowplowanalytics.self-desc/schema/jsonschema/1-0-0#",
  "description": "Entity that indicates a deep-link has been received and processed.",
  "self": {
    "vendor": "com.snowplowanalytics.mobile",
    "name": "deep_link",
    "format": "jsonschema",
    "version": "1-0-0"
  },
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "url": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "URL in the received deep-link",
      "format": "uri",
      "maxLength": 4096
    },
    "referrer": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Referrer URL, source of this deep-link",
      "format": "uri",
      "maxLength": 4096
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "url"
  ],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

Link clicks

The web trackers can automatically track link click events, capturing details about the clicked link such as its URL, element ID, classes, target, and content.

This table shows the support for link click tracking across the main client-side Snowplow tracker SDKs. The server-side trackers don't include link click tracking.

Tracker	Supported	Since version	Auto-tracking	Notes
Web	✅	0.7.0 (limited functionality), 3.0.0 (plugin)	✅	Requires link click plugin
iOS	❌
Android	❌
React Native	❌
Flutter	❌
Roku	❌
Google Tag Manager	✅	v3	✅	Integrates with link click plugin

To track link clicks on web using React Native or Flutter, you can implement custom event tracking when users interact with links in your app using the link_click event schema.

We recommend using the Base web tracking plan template for web tracking. It includes link clicks.

link_click

Event

Schema for a link click event

Schema URIiglu:com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow/link_click/jsonschema/1-0-1

Properties and schema

Table
JSON schema

Property	Description
`elementId` string	Optional.
`elementClasses` array	Optional.
`elementTarget` string	Optional.
`targetUrl` string	Required.
`elementContent` string	Optional.

json
{
  "$schema": "http://iglucentral.com/schemas/com.snowplowanalytics.self-desc/schema/jsonschema/1-0-0#",
  "description": "Schema for a link click event",
  "self": {
    "vendor": "com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow",
    "name": "link_click",
    "format": "jsonschema",
    "version": "1-0-1"
  },
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "elementId": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "elementClasses": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "type": "string"
      }
    },
    "elementTarget": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "targetUrl": {
      "type": "string",
      "minLength": 1
    },
    "elementContent": {
      "type": "string"
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "targetUrl"
  ],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

Warehouse query

Snowflake
BigQuery
Databricks
Redshift & Postgres

sql
select
unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_snowplow_link_click_1 link_click_1
from
atomic.events
where
events.collector_tstamp > getdate() - interval '1 hour'
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'link_click'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow'

sql
select
unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_snowplow_link_click_1_0_1
from
PIPELINE_NAME.events events
where
events.collector_tstamp > timestamp_sub(current_timestamp(), interval 1 hour)
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'link_click'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow'

sql
select
unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_snowplow_link_click_1
from
atomic.events events
where
events.collector_tstamp > timestampadd(HOUR, -1, current_timestamp())
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'link_click'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow'
and unstruct_event_com_snowplowanalytics_snowplow_link_click_1 is not null

sql
select
"link_click_1".*
from
atomic.events events
join atomic.com_snowplowanalytics_snowplow_link_click_1 "link_click_1"
  on "link_click_1".root_id = events.event_id and "link_click_1".root_tstamp = events.collector_tstamp
where
events.collector_tstamp > getdate() - interval '1 hour'
and "link_click_1".root_tstamp > getdate() - interval '1 hour'
and events.event = 'unstruct'
and events.event_name = 'link_click'
and events.event_vendor = 'com.snowplowanalytics.snowplow'

Cross-domain tracking

Read more about tracking cross-domain in the cross-navigation page.

Referrer atomic event property​

Deep links for mobile​

deep_link_received

deep_link

Link clicks​

link_click

Cross-domain tracking​

Want to see a custom demo?

Referrer atomic event property

Deep links for mobile

Link clicks

Cross-domain tracking