What Is the Sales by Referring Site Report?
Shopify records the external web address a visitor came from before they reached your store, and this report groups your orders by that address. For a date range you choose, it lines up each referring site next to the landing site, the customer email, the full set of UTM values, and the total sales tied to that traffic.
The useful distinction here is between the referring site and your UTM tags. UTM values only exist when you tag a link yourself. The referring site is captured automatically, so this report can surface sources you never tagged: an influencer mention, an affiliate blog, a forum thread, a press write-up, or a partner page. Those often drive real revenue while staying invisible in a UTM-only view.
Because the Email field is included, the report stays at the order and customer level rather than a pre-summed total. You can trace a specific buyer back to the site that sent them, which is why merchants reach for this report when they want to confirm where their paying customers actually originated.
Which Fields Are Included in the Sales by Referring Site Report?
These fields let you connect an incoming source to the revenue and the customer behind it.
You can adjust the pre-made report by adding, removing, or reordering columns so it matches how you review traffic and sales.
Important Insights You Can Find in This Report
Which referring sites are driving sales that your UTM reports never show?
Sort by Total Sales and look for referring sites that carry revenue but have blank UTM Source, Medium, and Campaign fields. These are untagged sources: affiliates, press, forums, or organic mentions. A UTM-only report cannot see them, so this is often the first place a real but unrecognised channel shows up. When one keeps appearing, it is worth reaching out to that site or formalising the relationship.
Does a source send traffic to a landing page that actually converts?
Pair Referring Site with Landing Site to see where each source drops its visitors. Two referrers can send similar volume while one lands people on a page that sells and the other on a page that stalls. If a strong-revenue source points at a specific landing site, that entry point is worth protecting and reusing; if a source lands on a weak page, the fix may be the destination, not the source.
Are your highest-revenue referrers backed by repeat buyers or one-off orders?
Because Email is on every row, you can scan for the same customer appearing under a source more than once, or the same source producing many distinct emails. A referrer that brings back known customers behaves differently from one that only produces first-time orders, and each deserves a different budget decision.
THE ANALYST'S READ: The Signal Most Merchants Miss
The gap between the referring site and the UTM fields is the signal worth watching. When a row shows strong Total Sales, a clear Referring Site, and empty UTM values, it usually means a source is converting without any tagging on your side. That is easy to overlook because it never appears in campaign dashboards. Look for the same untagged referrer recurring across the period. If it holds, it may point to an affiliate, creator, or partner relationship that is quietly earning revenue and could be tagged, tracked, and scaled deliberately rather than left to chance.
How Can You Automate the Sales by Referring Site Report?
Open the pre-made Sales by Referring Site report in Report Pundit and save it; the columns are already set. To rebuild it yourself, add the fields above in Custom Reports, set your date range, and apply a filter if you want to focus on one source or period.
Once saved, schedule it to email on a daily, weekly, or monthly cycle so it arrives built. You can auto-send the same schedule to your team, a VA, or an accountant, export it as Excel, CSV, or PDF, or push it to Google Sheets or Google Drive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between the referring site and UTM source in this report?
The referring site is the external address Shopify captures automatically for the visit. The UTM source only appears when you tagged the link yourself. A referring site can have revenue with no UTM values at all, which is how untagged sources surface here.
Why are some UTM fields blank while the referring site is filled in?
Because UTM values depend on tagged links. If a customer arrived through an untagged link, Shopify still records the referring site but has no UTM data to store, so those columns stay empty for that order.
Can I see which specific customers came from a referring site?
Yes. The Email field keeps each row at the order level, so you can tie a source to the individual buyers it produced rather than only a summed total.
Does this report show direct or untracked traffic?
Orders with no captured referrer will show an empty Referring Site value. That typically reflects direct visits or sessions where a referrer was not passed, so treat blank referrers as "source not recorded" rather than a specific site.
How is this different from the UTM Report?
The UTM Report is organised around your UTM tags and adds net quantity. This report leads with the referring site and includes Email, so it is the better choice when you want to find and verify sources by their actual referrer URL, including ones you never tagged.