What is news.ycombinator.com in my analytics?

Why every HN visit looks the same

Hacker News pages carry one line in their source: <meta name="referrer" content="origin">. That sets the referrer rule for the whole page, and the origin rule means the browser sends only the site’s address, https://news.ycombinator.com/, with no path (MDN).

So a click from the front page, from the Show HN list, from a story’s comment thread and from someone’s profile all reach you as the same referrer. The item id that would tell you which thread it was is never sent.

hn.algolia.com is Hacker News search: the search box in the footer of HN’s lists and threads sends you there. A visit from there means someone searched HN and clicked a result that pointed at you: a post, or a comment that mentioned you.

What it hides

Which post, and whether it was your post at all. A comment in someone else’s thread that mentions your product sends the same referrer as your own Show HN. If you didn’t post anything and still see a spike, somebody else linked to you: search HN for your domain to find the thread.

How to see which post it was

When you submit your own link, tag it:

https://example.com/?utm_source=hn&utm_campaign=show-hn

The tag is part of the address, so every click on your submission carries it, including clicks from apps and readers that send no referrer at all. Links other people post won’t have your tag, and for those the plain referrer plus a search on HN is the best you get.

What to post, how to title it and what the rules allow is in how to post a Show HN.

With Nordva Launch

Launch counts news.ycombinator.com as social, and hn.algolia.com as a referral, the channel for another website. A UTM tag that names a channel (a medium such as email or social, or a known source) wins over the referrer, and utm_source=hn or utm_source=hackernews is also counted as social.