How to Target Search and Social Media Referrers

Many Piano clients want to target or exclude from experiences all users who arrive from social media and/or search. Piano's support of URL wildcards, which are discussed in detail here, makes this easy. For your convenience, below are the URL strings for all major search and social sites that you may want to insert in the "Referred From" section of the User Segment or Pageview Meter cards to target or exclude users coming from these sites.

Note that the "*://" prefix will automatically be added to these values when you insert them into Piano's system:

If you're targeting all users referred from social media, you'll likely want to include both the normal and alternate URLs used by some of these social media platforms:

This list of popular referrers can easily be modified to suit your purposes. When deciding which social and search referrers to include or exclude, it's worth considering which referrers are relevant to your industry or location. So, if you are running an IT website, Stack Exchange might be an important social referrer. Or you have a large Russian readership, you might want to include Vkontakte, the country's largest social media site. You should feel free to leave off any social or search referrers not relevant to your website.

Last updated: June 26, 2026