Tracking PPC partner referers

how can you track which partner sent the click?

[jarboy]

Hi,

I'm sure it's been asked here before - but I can't find the answer.
How can I identify the partner that sent the click to my site e.g ppc with espotting and partner is Yahoo. Is the referer in the header Yahoo or espotting?

could I use HTTP_REFERER in PHP to add the refering site to my logging database?

Hope you can help

Thanks

[sugarkane]

In all cases that I'm aware of, the partner site will show up as the referrer rather than the PPC provider.

To track partner / PPC combinations, you could set the PPC destination URL to include a tracking code - eg www.example.com/index.html?ppc=espotting

Matching up these requests with the referral info will give you a good picture of where your paid traffic is coming from.

[itrainu]

This is a question I have been thinking about as well. I need the blanks filled in ;-)

A referrer string ie. www.example.com/index.html?ppc=espotting leads to a non existant page on my site...so do I make a change in my httaccess file to redirect this page to my main page?

Thanks ;-)

itrainu

[sugarkane]

So long as index.html exists you should be fine - anything after the '?' will just be discarded by the server, but will show up in your logs.

Anything you put after the '?' is treated like parameters passed to a CGI script, but as the page is actually html and not a script, it just ignores the parameters you've given it :)

Added: This might not work if you already have some URL rewriting going on using mod_rewrite or similar