Document: referrer property

The Document.referrer property returns the URI of the page that linked to this page.

Value

The value is an empty string if the user navigated to the page directly (not through a link, but, for example, by using a bookmark). Because this property returns only a string, it doesn't give you document object model (DOM) access to the referring page.

Inside an iframe, the Document.referrer will initially be set to the href of the parent's Window.location in same-origin requests. In cross-origin requests, it's the origin of the parent's Window.location by default. For more information, see the Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin documentation.

Examples

The following will log a string containing the document's referrer.

console.log(document.referrer);

If the user navigated to the page via a link like <a href="https://www.w3.org/">W3</a>, then it will output the previous domain like developer.mozilla.org. If the user navigated to the page directly, it will output an empty string.

Specifications

Browser compatibility