Ghost automatically records the source of a member at the time of sign-up or paid conversion, helping you understand where your audience is coming from — whether it’s search, social media, referrals, or something else.

Creating custom sources

You can also set custom sources manually, which is especially useful for marketing campaigns. For example, if you’re running a paid promotion in another newsletter or partnering with an influencer, you can track exactly how many signups came from that campaign.

To create a custom source, add one of the following query parameters to the URL that links to your site: ref, source, or utm_source.

For example, each of the following would result in a source of xyz:

• example.com?ref=xyz
• example.com?source=xyz
• example.com?utm_source=xyz

That’s it — Ghost will automatically track all new members who sign up from those URLs and attribute them to that custom source.

Outbound link tagging

In addition to tracking where your visitors and new members come from, Ghost can also tag links in your content that point to external sites — so those sites can see how much traffic you're sending their way.

When this setting is enabled, outbound links will automatically include a query parameter showing your site as the referrer. For example: ?ref=example.com

You can toggle this feature on or off in Settings → Analytics.