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If you’re running WordPress, did you notice a recent change in your analytics where more traffic is being attributed to direct traffic or a no-referral bucket? When WordPress updated to 4.7.4, the text editor TinyMCE also updated, and this is where the problem actually lies.
In November 2016, TinyMCE added a security update that added rel=”noopener noreferrer” on links with target=”_blank”. This has since been changed to remove the noreferrer part in TinyMCE, but I don’t believe WordPress has this update yet. With this, traffic that should count as referral traffic may be misattributed.
[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]
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