As you know, when you click a link on a web page, your web browser will take you to that page. But did you know, that when your web browser takes you to that new page, it also typically tells the website you're going to which page sent (or "referred") you to it?
This page tells you what your web browser sent as the "referring" page. If you came from our My Browser page it will show our domain name and say "The Home Page". Maybe you came from another link on our site - if you did, it will show the domain name (whatismybrowser.com) and the path of that page...
If you came to this page from another website, it will show that domain name, and maybe the path of that particular page.
In some cases, your referrer will be blank and we can't determine where you came from. There's a few reasons this might be the case.
There are a few reasons we might tell you that you don't have a referrer.
If you typed or pasted this url in directly in to your web browser you won't have a referrer. This is because you weren't actually "referred" here from another site: you came here directly. This is also the case if you visited this page from a bookmark.
It's now possible for web sites to instruct your web browser to hide them as the referrer. So in other words, while normally if you clicked a link from Site A to Site B, Site B would know that you came from a link on Site A. However, now Site A can now tell your browser to not share with Site B that you came from Site A.
There's a few levels of control - a website can completely hide the referrer, it can share that it was the referrer but hide the actual page they came from, or show the full path/page that they came from.
You might also have a web browser extension that is hiding or changing the referrer that you send.
We can't vouch for any of these extensions, but a few examples of such extensions are: Firefox: Referer Control, Firefox: Toggle Referrer, Chrome: Referer Control. You could investigate these if you are interested.
The referring website is passed in the HTTP_REFERER header. If you're interested in the HTTP headers your browser sends, you can see them with our What HTTP Headers is my browser sending page.
A curious thing about the HTTP_REFERER HTTP header is that it's mispelt! It should be "Referrer" not "Referer". This mistake was made in the original proposal (in the 1990s) for its addition to the HTTP specification. By the time the mistake was noticed it was too late and it was already in wide-spread use. You can learn a bit more about it on Wikipedia's page for HTTP Referer.
If you have any more questions, use the contact form and we'll answer it and add your question here.