Referrer

A referrer is a person who refers someone else to another person or medium. This referral can take place to alert someone to an authority in a specific field. Several examples of this construction can be named. After all, society is formed by a chain of individuals who are interconnected. In this context, we can name drawing attention to a reference at a job interview as an example or a general practitioner referring a patient to a medical specialist. When someone performs an action to put another person in contact with a professional in a specific field, we speak of a referent.

There are several examples of referrals in online environments as well. These include placing links on a Web page to Web sites that are seen as authorities in a specific field. Affiliate marketing constructs also involve referrals. In this case, the affiliate is paid a commission when a transaction occurs as a result of a referral. Finally, we know the HTTP referrer. This link lists the visitor's origin to determine what the visitor's last visited web page was. This information can be useful when analyzing statistical data traffic and for commercial purposes. The term HTTP referrer appears to be misspelled (the missing letter "R") but this is a mistake that was made in 1996 and has stuck.