REL = NoOpener + NoReferrer

What is rel=”NoOpener”?

rel=”NoOpener” is an HTML attribute that can be added to external links. It prevents the opening page to gain any kind of access of the original page.

Dealing with HTML tags and attributes is confusing for many people but that shouldn’t be the case with NoReferrer and NoOpener.

The NoOpener is needed to enhance the security of your website and prevent other websites from gaining access to your page (through the browser session).

The NoReferrer is used to protect referral information from being passed to the target website and this also hides referral traffic in Google analytics.

If you want other websites to see traffic from your website as ‘ Referral traffic ’, then simply do not open external links in a new tab. This will prevent page or site from automatically adding the attributes to the links and everything is good.

What is rel=”NoReferrer”?

The rel=”NoReferrer” tag is a special HTML attribute that can be added to a link tag (<a>). It prevents passing the referrer information to the target website by removing the referral info from the HTTP header.

This means that in Google analytics traffic coming from links that have the rel=”NoReferrer” attribute will show as Direct Traffic instead of Referral.

Let’s say that you link from website A to Website B without the “NoReferrer” tag.

When the owner of website B views the ‘ ACQUISITION ’ report in Google Analytics, he can see traffic coming from Website A, under the ‘ REFERRALS ’ section.

When you link from Website A to Website B using the “NoReferrer” tag, any traffic going from Website A to Website B will show as DIRECT traffic in Google Analytics (and not referral).

When to use rel=”noreferrer”?

Use the rel=”NoReferrer” attribute on outgoing links when you don’t want other sites to know that you are linking to them. Can’t think of any valid reason why you might want to do this, but that’s the case.

Definitely do not use the rel=”NoReferrer” attribute on internal links, it can mess up with your Google analytics reports.

To ensure you are not going to be experience any malicious site targetting with Opener in a New tab which the HMTL can be designed to target you without ever noticing, especially if you have habit of opening several New Tabs and go through it one by one. By the time you come to the Tab, it will already be in control of bad actor hence you can come across with file encrypted or site overtaken by bad actor. It does not matter if it index.html or malicious.html .

On address bar ' about:config ' and press Enter, then find by typing it in Search bar NoOpener, Mozilla will by default have it activated for NoOpener NewProcess and make sure it is ' True '.

dom.noopener.newprocess.enabled

Find next TargetBlankNoOpener and make sure it is changed to activated, by changing it from ' False ' to ' True '.

dom.targetBlankNoOpener.enabled

Change search query to NoReferrer and make sure it activated ( ' True ' ) and ensure it is not ' False ' as in Deactivated.

dom.window.open.noreferrer.enabled