tracking links clicked on my site

outgoing, that is...

[mcjohnson]

I have a site where I sell banner space AND text ad space to vendors. I want to be able to track those specific links clicked so I can tell my advertisers "356 people clicked on your ad in November".

Is that possible? And if so, which webstats program handles that sort of data?

Thanks!

[jonrichd]

In order to do that, you need to have the link go through an URL on your site so you can track that URL's activity.

Many sites use something like click.php?url=widgets.com.

All click.php does is look for the URL argument, and then do a redirect to whatever the argument is, in this case, widgets.com. Look at the links in posts here in WebmasterWorld - they do the same thing.

Your log program can then tell you the number of times that each click.php variation was accessed, which gives you the stats you need.

I would suggest for the benefit of your advertisers that you do a 301 redirect in your click.php script rather than a 302.

[geniosity]

If you're using Google Analytics they use the "OnClick" function call to track clicks on URLs.

You can view more info on the related Help Page: [google.com...]

[Receptional]

Yes - tag based systems are better than log files for tracking this sort of thing. There's a list of them in this forum's library.

[plumsauce]

Keep in mind that there are some systems that feature autotagging of all outbounds rather than forcing a manual edit of your pages.