How do I know if people are recommending my app?
19 September 2026 · by Nordva, who make Nordva Launch
The short answer
You can't see most recommendations directly: they happen in chats, calls and meetings. Watch the signals instead: more visits that land straight on your homepage with no source, more people searching your product's name, and answers to "how did you hear about us?". Then give recommendations a trackable path: a personal referral link for every user, and a question at signup.
Why you can’t see it directly
Most recommendations travel as a name said out loud or a link pasted into a private chat. The person arrives later, often typing your address or searching your name. To analytics, they look like direct or search traffic with no story attached.
The signals that show it anyway
- Direct visits to the homepage growing while you haven’t posted anything new. Especially visits that go straight to signup.
- People searching for your product’s name. Your search console shows the queries; your name appearing more often means people heard it somewhere.
- Signups from companies or communities you never contacted.
- What people tell you. A single field at signup, “How did you hear about us?”, with free text. Answers such as “a friend”, “my team lead” or the name of a Slack group are word of mouth you’d otherwise never see.
None of these is exact. Together, over a few months, they show whether it’s happening.
Give recommendations a path you can count
- A personal referral link for each user, such as
yourapp.com/?ref=anna. When someone shares it, the visit and the signup carry who sent it. - Make sharing easy where it happens naturally: after a result worth showing, in an export, in a public page the product makes.
- A small reason to share, if it fits: moving up a waitlist, a month free. Keep it modest; large rewards bring people who came for the reward.
Read it with payments
Recommendations are often a product’s best channel: people arrive already trusting it. Check it by comparing people who came through a referral link, or said “a friend”, with other sources: do more of them sign up, stay and pay?
With Nordva Launch
Launch’s analytics records ?ref= on the first page along with the referring site and UTM tags. Every waitlist signup gets its own referral link on every plan, and Launch records who referred whom; a leaderboard needs Indie. With Stripe connected, paying customers are traced to their first visit, and on Builder, attribution can be grouped by referral code.
When Launch is the wrong tool
If you need a full referral programme with payouts and fraud checks, use a dedicated referral tool. This page is about knowing whether people recommend you at all, and seeing it early.
- How do I track referrals for my app?
- How do I measure word-of-mouth growth?
- How did users hear about us?