Abstract: Systems, methods and articles that detect or otherwise analyze dark social traffic, which traffic was previously designated as “direct traffic” by Web analytics tools. The dark social traffic may be attributed to social channels which allows social marketers to analyze and prove the value of social marketing to their business. Such detection of dark social traffic may include analyzing a Web address included in a Web page request to determine whether the Web address (e.g., URL) includes at least one tracking parameter, which provides an indication that the Web page request emanated from a social share rather than direct traffic. Metadata present in a Web page request may be analyzed to determine the referrer source even when the source does not pass a referrer URL.