Came from XY engine, but which page?

[smallcompany]

Is it possible to know from which search result page a visitor has come? Is there analytics software that does that?

[toplisek]

Some people use: $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
but as we know this is not reliable (hackers can spoof it and firewalls and even proxy caches might disable it). But it means also that it is not prohibited (can be used). Additional way is also to use API's (maybe other search indexes) to see how and from where the site is listed..

[smallcompany]

Thanks.

Let me rephrase:

Which page: 1st, 4th or 10th?

[topr8]

well if you do a query on google, then press the page 2 link - see how the querystring changes? from this you can work out what page they came from, but remember different users have different numbers of results in the SERPS (you can change this with the preferences)

these query strings are mostly available form your raw log files - unless as toplisek says it is blocked in some way - although i don't know of an analytics software that extracts the data for you.

[smallcompany]

Got it, thanks.

I use $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] but wasn't aware of "start" in Google or "b" in Yahoo for example.

[toplisek]

but wasn't aware of "start" in Google or "b" in Yahoo for example. ...

What do you mean?Please explain what you have now with $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] and limitation from your own experience?

[smallcompany]

What do you mean?

Means I never paid attention to every single variable in search engine referring URLs.