Analytics report redirects from domain aliases as 'sources'

Summary

Background

For all the domains for which I have analytics enabled, I also have multiple domain aliases (via third party DNS CNAMEs and Netlify custom domain configuration). I have set up _redirects so that for each site, all the non-primary aliases (and .netlify.app) domain redirect to the primary domain.

The Issue

The problem is that in the analytics if someone lands on theother-domain.example.com and is redirected to primary-domain.example.net, then in the analytics theother-domain.example.com can appear in Top sources as the source of the ‘hit’. Likewise with the AWS IP address (that one shows up in my princesandmadmen.netlify.app site, as shown in the screenshot below):

Primary domain: www.princesandmadmen.ca

image

Expected Result

‘Internal’ redirects should not count as Top sources (although knowing about them would be a nice to have additional table).

Affected Netlify Domains:

  • princesandmadmen.netlify.app
  • danielfdickinson.netlify.app
  • thecshore.netlify.app
  • wildtechgarden.netlify.app

Additional Information?

If you require additional information (such as the list of custom domains, including alias domains), I can provide that as well.

Hi @anon12706998,

I’m moving this topic to the Features category as it’s more like a suggestion to an existing feature. Feel free to let me know if that’s incorrect. At the moment, yes, you’re correct that traffic will show up as top sources because I believe those would end up in the referrer headers. At the moment we don’t check if the referrer header is one of the domain aliases for the site, thus the problem.

I’ll file an internal feature request with this later during the day and we’ll update the thread if anything changes.