Server Side Tracking (Click Counter)

Doesa click counter get you in trouble with Search Engines?

[GunnerM]

Today, I installed a PERL freeware click-counter that uses the following syntax:

<a href="http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/click.cgi?link=http://newdomain.com">New Domain</a>

The code is simple and direct, and works well. The questions are:

In General, how would the search engines view this?
Will they ignore the links?
Will they stop spidering my site?
How would the visitor god, Google, view this?

Thanks, GunnerM

[Receptional]

In General, how would the search engines view this?

- ambivalently

Will they ignore the links?

- No... well, yes they may due to the dynamic nature of the URL, but for the sake of an easy answer, no - they won't ignore the link.

Will they stop spidering my site?

- Maybe, but it won't be because of this.

How would the visitor god, Google, view this?
- Again, with amibavelence. Someone might argue that you are seeping page rank on every page that uses the counter. I am not one of the people that has any store in this theory. You MUST know about your visitors. Arguably a client side system that uses a javascript is better in this regard, but not if your visitors have java disabled browsers, so it is swings and roundabouts.

Sorry if I can't spell ambivalence. I could have checked in the time it took to write this extra bit... oh well.

[Receptional]

Gunner - you stickied me. Your sticky implied that the effect of that script might be to redirect the user?

If it does, then all bets are off. If you redirect then Totally ignore everything I said - it isn't really a counter then, more of a redirection script...

Dixon.

[GunnerM]

Receptional Said "Gunner - you stickied me. Your sticky implied that the effect of that script might be to redirect the user?"

NO, the CGI Script does not redirect the user - it simply runs it through the CGI script, so that the click can be counted, and then, using JAVA script, the user is sent on to the URL of the link that they clicked.

If the user is not JAVA enabled, a screen appears that has the following advice:

"If your browser is not JAVA enabled, please click on link above." Note: The link is displayed for the user.

The net result is that in the event that a user is not JAVA enabled, they would have to click twice to get to their desired destination. The destination will not have been changed (re-directed).

If that constitutes re-direction, I will have to remove the script.

What do you think? Is that re-direction?

GunnerM