What is github.com in my analytics?
23 September 2026 · by Nordva, who make Nordva Launch
The short answer
It means someone clicked a link to your site on GitHub: most often in a repository's README, but also in an issue, a discussion, a profile or a gist (which shows as gist.github.com). Browsers pass on only the site's address, so you can't tell from the referrer which repository or page the click came from.
- Referrer
- github.com
- What sends it
- A link clicked on GitHub: a README, an issue, a profile or a gist
- Nordva Launch counts it as
- Referral (another website or app)
- Also shows up as
- gist.github.com
Why visits show it
GitHub shows a README on the repository’s front page, and a README in a public repository named after your username appears on your profile too. Those are the usual places a link to a product’s site sits. Links in issues, pull requests, discussions and release notes send visits the same way. A gist is a small shared snippet hosted at gist.github.com, so a click from one shows that host instead.
When someone clicks, the browser passes on the origin of the page they were on. With the default referrer policy that is only github.com, not the repository or the file.
What it hides
Which repository, which page, and whose. Your own README, a popular “awesome” list that includes you, and an issue where someone recommended you all arrive as one github.com row. For an open-source project with a paid product next to it, that is the difference between “our README works” and “someone else’s list works”, and the referrer can’t tell you which.
On any site, a link can also carry no referrer at all: rel="noreferrer" on the link, or a strict Referrer-Policy on the page, makes the browser leave it out, and the visit counts as direct.
How to see which repository it was
Tag the links you control. Tags are part of the address, so they arrive whatever the browser sends:
https://example.com/?utm_source=github&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=readme-cliGive each repository its own utm_campaign (readme-cli, readme-sdk, profile), and use a different one in release notes and gists. You can’t tag links other people post, so the untagged github.com remainder reads as “someone else linked to us”.
GitHub’s own traffic graph is the other half. It shows visitors to your repository and the sites that referred them (leaving out search engines and GitHub itself), for the past 14 days, to anyone with push access. That is traffic into GitHub; your tags measure traffic out of it.
With Nordva Launch
Launch counts github.com and gist.github.com as referral. A link tagged like the one above stays referral too, because neither github nor referral names another channel, but its utm_campaign is kept with the visit, so each README shows as its own row in your analytics. Paying customers by referring site work on every plan once Stripe is connected; grouping them by utm_campaign needs Builder.
When Launch is the wrong tool
If you only want to know how people find your repository, GitHub's own traffic graph shows that. Launch is for when you want to know whether the people who clicked from GitHub to your site signed up and paid.
- What is gist.github.com referral traffic?
- How do I track clicks from my GitHub README?
- Which repository sent me visitors?
- MDN: Referrer-Policy (the default policy sends only the origin to another site) (read 23 September 2026)
- MDN: rel=noreferrer (a link that sends no referrer at all) (read 23 September 2026)
- GitHub Docs: about READMEs (where a README is shown) (read 23 September 2026)
- GitHub Docs: creating gists (gists live at gist.github.com) (read 23 September 2026)
- GitHub Docs: viewing traffic to a repository (referring sites, past 14 days) (read 23 September 2026)