Let me rephrase that for myself, hopefully I have it right (?):
The Top Referred Topics report
- shows topics in the current forum
- which visitors have landed on after following a link to them from another site.
- The “Clicks” column shows how many times this has happened.
- Any such link on another site counts. It does not need to have been shared via the discourse Share button.
- Navigating to a topic within the current forum, or following a link within a post body in the current forum, or typing a topic’s url directly into your browser address bar, does not count.
(There are a lot of ways to intepret this stuff when you’re unfamiliar. I guess “Referred” and “Clicks” are standard(ish) jargon but I would have understood “Top Topics Visited From Outside” and “Visits” quicker.)