Can a website tell what site you were just on if there isn't a referral in the link (see details)?

Yes. The HTTP protocol requires a referring URL field be included (along with a lot of others). So they’ll know that you came from Fluther. But only in the aggregate.

Fluther does not attach a unique identifier, which is good. Many sites include some unique ID across sites in order to track your actions. Forbes does that. In fact, most news sites do that and so do shopping sites.

Your example of using a bookmark would be considered “direct” traffic, so wouldn’t have a referrer. Just like if you typed www.facebook.com into the address bar of your browser.

If you click a link on fluther, like the one automatically generated above, then that would include a referrer and could be tracked by your IP, which could be connected to your facebook account and recorded.

As far as the theoretical fluther-side, they only know if you clicked the link if that’s recorded somehow other than just the request, which is handled by your browser instead of fluther’s servers.

Too late to edit, but this site will show your referrer/referer easily

What is my referer?

Not with a bookmark.

But every-time you visit a site with facebook or twitter badges they know you visited that site/page. If you can see that like button facebook knows you are there. And don’t even get me started on google. Every site that uses google analytics tells google where you are. This is nearly every popular website. Even this one

Granted, Fluther is 90% better than most sites about this. On CNN 14 trackers are blocked.