Understanding the PPC url variables

yahoo, google, search url variables

[surftrip]

hi all. not too sure how many of you use 'referrer' as a traffic management tool, but i do.

i am really trying to find a good explanation as to what the various 'fields' are that can be concatenated to the url in which someone clicked to get to me.

for instance. we sell widgets. when someone buys widgets, i get the referrer from which they came. here's an example:

[search.yahoo.com...]

this means this person saw our PPC ad for "Blue Widgets" by searching for "Blue Widgets"

(i.e. in the url p=blue+widgets)

but what does fr=my_top mean?

and many times with almost all search engines there is some type of variable concatenation going on.

does anyone know where one can learn just what these variables mean to better understand user habits and usage?

thanks.

christian griffith

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 3:58 pm (utc) on June 8, 2004]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]

[satanclaus]

Most of the time when I see "funny variables" I grab the referer string and throw it into a browser to see whats going on there. Try removing that variable and see what changes in the results. They may use it simply as a tracking mechanism.

[dmethvin]

I would guess that my_top means "My Yahoo page, search box at the top of the page". On my My Yahoo page I have the web search at the bottom of the page. You'll never guess what it adds to the URL: :)

[search.yahoo.com...]

There are two search forms on the yahoo.com home page, they seem to be fr=fp-tab-web-t and fr=fp-bot at least on my page. You may be able to figure these out by entering data into the various searches on the Yahoo site.

[surftrip]

thanks all. good ideas, and i have tried most of them already; however - and maybe this is a content idea for myself - but i'd love a resource that would explain these variables to me.

as an internet marketer, anything i can do to better understand the habits of consumers will better help me create better more targeted content.

thanks again.