Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong
www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/dark-social-we-have-the-whole-history-of-the-web-wrong/263523
From the page
Saved with the link. Notes from 2007 to 2016 are mostly the page's own words, so this is probably an excerpt.
And then one day, we had a meeting with the real-time web analytics firm, Chartbeat. Like many media nerds, I love Chartbeat. It lets you know exactly what's happening with your stories, most especially where your readers are coming from. Recently, they made an accounting change that they showed to us. They took visitors who showed up without referrer data and split them into two categories.