Tracking Outbound Links

using an intermediate redirect page, is it OK?

[ken_b]

To track the use of a few outbound links on my site I'm thinking about sending the link to a new page that will then have a fast and automatic redirect to the destination site.

1: Will taht cause me any problems with the search engines?

2: Is it advisable to put a brief message on the intermediate page saying something like....

Thanks for visiting mysite, please come back soon.
(If this page stalls, click here to continue on to <destinationsite.com>

PS: I have looked back through old threads here looking for this info, can't find it.

[Woz]

I see no problems with what you are suggesting. Google does follow redirects, and I believe the other main engines do as well, and PR is passed on, albeit perhaps a little diminished.

If you are logging the data, be careful how you log it and think carefuly about just what information you really need. If you are not careful and you have a medium to high traffic site, your database can blow out very quickly and bring a server to it's knees.

Onya
Woz

wish I could spell...

[edited by: Woz at 12:55 am (utc) on Jan. 19, 2003]

[ken_b]

Thanks Woz.

My traffic isn't all that high, so I'm not expecting a huge count. I'd just like to get a good idea of what it is.

[Woz]

>I'd just like to get a good idea of what it is.

Logging click throughs and search phrases can be one of the biggest eye-openers on the web. Do it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Onya
Woz

[Ash]

Hi Ken_b, I use AXS visitor tracking system purely for the stats you mention, it also shows basic visitor info. It's free and has an install feature on the site, which is very good.

[ken_b]

Well after a week, here is an update on this little experiment.

First I put up a small "links page", I've not had one before. But I wanted to direct a target group to this page and the links.

I haven't put up the intermediate pages yet. I just wanted to see if the links page got any traffic first.

It looks like about 6 - 10 percent (depending on how one counts) of my visitors went to the links page.

Of the people who arrived at my site with a specific phrase in their search term, 20% went to this page. Half of the 20% apparently left my site from there. This meant it was a 2 page visit to my site.

The other half went back to their entry page and continued browsing around my site, mostly from 4 to 10 pages, some to 200+ additonal pages.

The "phrase specific" visitors who did not go to the links page visited a similar number of pages.

Seven times as many people, who did not use the specific pahrase in a search, went to the links page, about 75% percent of them left my site from there. But most of them had visited 8 - 12 of my pages, or more, before going to the links page.

The most interesting thing about this is the apparent number of visitors who went to the links page, apparently followed a link from there and returned to that page to follow 1 or more of the other links off it.

Most of these numbers are much smaller than I thought they would be. The exception is the "returnee" number, that I didn't expect at all.

All of which means I apparently have no clue why people visit my site. :)

[europeforvisitors]

One side effect of using the redirect page is that the other site's page may be displayed in Google with your redirect page's URL.

That happened to me a few months ago. I wrote an article about a cruise ship, a cruise site linked to the article through a redirect page, and--after the Google update--my article was in the #1 spot for the cruise ship's name, but with the URL of the linking site's redirect page beneath the annotation.

(BTW, the cruise site eventually removed the link and the redirect page, and my own URL replaced the incorrect URL after the next Google update.)

[ken_b]

Europeforvisitors; Thanks for telling me that. Hmmmm.... something else to ponder.

Could I avoid that fate by making the links page and the redirect pages noindex, nofollow, nocache?

[austtr]

ken_b

Same scenario... different approach that may be "cleaner". This is on a unix box.

Just use a redirect script to force an entry into your log files and then use your log stats analysis to count the number of occurences? eg

<a href="/cgi-local/redir.pl?url=http://www.targetsite.com/">

The redir.pl is a commonly used cgi script available from most of the script sites.

You can do a search for "click through" scripts/managers etc and you'll find any number of them, many with their own reporting faculities. Catering to both unix and Windows systems.

Just a note of caution... it has been my experience that this method fails to generate referral data on the target site, so referral logs do not show the site from which the link came.