Restrict a coupon by referring website (PRO)
Updated September 15, 2026
The Referring Domain section (PRO) only honours a coupon when the shopper arrived from an approved website, or blocks shoppers who came from particular sites. Use it for partner-only codes, or to stop a code that has leaked onto a deals site.
Find it in the Better Coupon Restrictions tab on the coupon edit screen.
The fields
- Allowed Referring Domains: one per line. The coupon only works for visitors who came from one of these sites.
- Disallowed Referring Domains: one per line. Visitors who came from these sites cannot use the coupon.
Enter bare domains such as partner.com. Full URLs are accepted and reduced to the domain, and a leading www. is ignored. Subdomains are not matched automatically, so add blog.partner.com separately if needed.
Message: “Sorry, you can not use this coupon.”
How the referring site is remembered
When a visitor first lands on your site from another website, the plugin stores that site’s domain in a cookie called bcrw_referrer for 30 days. The first external site is kept; later visits from other sites do not replace it.
The cookie is only set when at least one coupon, or the global settings, has a referring domain list. Stores that do not use this feature set no cookie.
Things to know
- Visitors who type your address directly, or whose browser hides the referrer, have no referring domain. They fail an Allowed Referring Domains rule.
- Full page caching can serve the landing page without WordPress running, so the cookie is never set. If allowed shoppers are rejected, exclude the landing pages from your cache.
- Referrer information can be hidden or faked, so treat this as a deterrent rather than a guarantee.
Global domain lists
Allowed and disallowed referring domains can also be set for every coupon in the global settings, and are combined with each coupon’s lists. See Apply restrictions to all coupons with global settings (PRO).