Flipboard Referral Traffic Detection
1. Overview
Web traffic from Flipboard can be detected through the use of UTM parameters. These parameters are appended to publisher URLs before opening in any Flipboard client (iOS, Android, web).
2. How to Detect Flipboard Traffic
Flipboard appends two UTM parameters to every publisher URL:
2.1 utm_source
utm_source is always set to "flipboard"
2.2 utm_content
utm_content indicates the Flipboard context of the article. See below for more details.
3. Example URL with UTM parameters
Below is an example of a URL Flipboard clients would open if a user taps/clicks on an article.
https://www.inverse.com/gaming/nintendo-switch-best-games?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=archwizard%2Fmagazine%2FLurking+Beyond
Note the utm_source value "flipboard" and the utm_content value (URL-encoded) "archwizard%2Fmagazine%2FLurking+Beyond"
The decoded utm_content value is "archwizard/magazine/Lurking+Beyond"
Breaking the utm_content value down slightly, the first part (before the forward slash) indicates a Flipboard user, "archwizard."
The second part, "Magazine," indicates that the article was flipped into an archwizard-owned magazine.
The third part is the Magazine title that the article was flipped into, "Lurking+Beyond." The plus character indicates a space in the magazine name.
4. References
For more information about UTM parameters, please see the following resources