Forum Moderators: DixonJones
I want to use redirect pages to track specific links to my site. I can track links with my stats software but it would be very easy to setup a redirect page and just track that. My question is how search engines will deal with the redirects. I know that engines like google use site popularity to rank a site. If google (or any engine) follows an external link that hits a redirect with 0 sec refresh, will it stop at the link and not increase the popularity of my site?
I read that search engines think that redirects are possible spam and won't follow the link if it refreshes too quickly.
Would it make a difference if I used either a js redirect or a meta tag redirect?
The search engines won't find the redirects by going through my site, it will just be from external links.
Thanks
If the only way to get off the page is via your redirect method, then you are essentially creating an orphan page, which won't pass Google PR (which I'm assuming is what you mean by popularity). You'd need at least a regular A HREF link on the page to the destination.
I'd avoid either method if I were you. Assuming you have control of which pages these other sites link to, why not just duplicate your current destination page under a different name? You'll be creating what's termed a 'landing page', and you can point any links you want to track to different landing pages. No need for redirects as it'll be a legitimate site page.
Alternatively, if you stats software shows dynamic parameters, why not tag the incoming links, such as:
[mysite.com...]
The parameter will not affect the way your site functions, but will be stored in your logs.
I am not familiar with dynamic variables. Can you tell me a little more about them and how to use them? That actually sounds pretty hip in my situation.
As far as my comment on popularity...if I have a site with 10 external links to it from other sites that have alot of traffic, my understanding is that those links will improve my sites 'popularity' with search engines. But I am concerned about a search engine not following the link through if it sees a refresh command that quicly loads my index page.
You can put pretty much anything you want in the querystring, and as long as whatever software or service you're using will track Querystring data you won't need to create extra pages or anything.
Try it yourself - go to www.yourdomain.com/index.html
Then go to www.yourdomain.com/index.html?test=test
You'll see the exact same page without any trouble. But check out your logs - you should see another page view in your logs with?test=test after index.html. So all you have to do is make up querystrings like that for whatever you want.
I use them for my advertising on Google, Overture, Industry Brains, and everywhere else I advertise so I can look in iwebtrack and see where my visitors are coming from.
A link from a Google AdWords would be to the url:
www.mydomain.com/?ad=google
A link from Overture would be www.mydomain.com/?ad=overture
etc. then I can see how many people came from Overture, Google, or whatever I want.
So, could I use ..index.html?google
Or do I need the format?xx=****
Im not familiar with querystrings. I'll just have to check my log analyzer and see if it picks up the strings. I don't see why it wouldn't. That really sounds like it will work well.
http:// mydomain.com /page.html?param1=value¶m2=value¶m3=value
You need a question mark after the page URL, followed by the parameter name, an equals sign, and then the value. If you need more than one parameter you separate them using an ampersand - an and symbol.
As PPC tracking was mentioned, here's an example of something I use:
http:// www.mydomain.com /mypage.html?awid=270204_widg_01&awqu=widget+sales
This is for per-keyword Adwords tracking. awid is the Adwords ID and specifies the date the ad was set up and an ad capaign identifier. awqu is the search term that I bid on. The plus symbol between widget and sales is used instead of a space, but has no special significance. The format of this is totally my invention, and is not dictated by Google or anything like that.
Hopefully you can see by now that you can chuck pretty much whatever you want into the query string without messing up your site.
As you're using PHP, why not check for the existence of your tracking parameter in the HTTP GET array and echo a blocking metatag?
Something like:
<?php if ($_GET['trackingid']!= '')
{
echo "<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\">";
}
?>
Suggest you test this thoroughly before using it though. :)
