Why is referrer blank or false for a chat?  Why is the referrer truncated to just the top-level domain?

Empty referrers

There may be some settings a patron could use in their browser, or browser extensions to prevent tracking, that would prevent our system from capturing that data.  And of course, if the guest is using text messaging, then they will not have a referring URL.

Truncated referrer (just the top-level domain)

If your chats do not correctly reflect the full referring URL, you may not be using a chat snippet on your page. Contact support and we can help you transition to chat snippets.

Chat history prior to December 2022

Starting with Chrome 85, the default for transmitting the referring URL in cross-domain situations became "strict-origin-when-cross-domain" instead of "no-referrer-when-downgrade". The same thing happened with Firefox 87. What this means in practical terms is that the referring URL shows only the top-level domain (https://www.myschool.edu) and does not include the path to the particular web page where the chat actually started (e.g. https://www.myschool.edu/libraries/).

In December 2022, we made enhancements to chat snippets which ensure that the referring URL is captured for each chat. We did this by automatically setting the "referer" argument on the chat box's direct URL per web page.

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