Unknown Referers

% of unknown referers in log

[planit]

On looking at my web logs 70% of visits have unknown referers.

Is this normal or could I have a problem with my logs.

My site is a normal ecommerse site and we dont advertise outside the web. Also the name is not well known so peole would not be looking for it.

[mincklerstraat]

Quite possibly your stats program is tracking 'bookmarks' as unknown referrers. This would be a reasonable number for bookmarks.

[planit]

I wouldnt have thought that that many people would bookmark us though.

The reason this has become important is that a ppc referer is quoting far higher leads than my logs suggest. If I cant seem to track them I cant start thinking about conversion rates.

The site runs on an Apache web server.

[mincklerstraat]

If your domain is the one in your e-mail, it doesn't work without the www. Quite possibly your affiliate, or some other link, links you w/o the www. Then when this doesn't work, people manually type in the www. Just a guess. At any rate, you'll want to switch things around so you have a 301 redirect on the non/www url, and if the link bit is correct, have your PPC partner change the url on their site to keep things consistent. If this is the case, and you gave the PPC partner the address with the www, you might have grounds to pay less for past clicks, or dispute their claims and go by your logs, since they didn't link you up properly.

[larryn]

planit,

If your goal is to track PPC visit referrals, the easiest/best/smartest way to do that is to use 'tracking fields' in the URL you put in the ad.

For instance, instead of using

http://www.mysite.com

for the PPC link, use

http://www.mysite.com?ref=thatsite

. Overture allows you to add extra info to that link, check your control panel. Personally, I add the referral source, campaign/category and keywords I've bid on.

Use those tracking fields to identify the source and frequency of your PPC referrals.

Larry

[planit]

Thanks,
I think that is a much better way of tracking things and it is pretty much foolproof.
Also conversion tracking should be easier.