ppc visitors only view tracking page

don't enter site completely

[jamie]

would appreciate any ideas as to why so many of our ppc visitors only view one page?

all referrals from adwords and overture go to a php tracking script which sets a cookie and looks up the correct link based on an array of codes (no database connect)

i have tested time and time again on a number of setups and the time for redirection and cookie setting is negligeable.

however on average 20% of our ppc visitors only ever see the first tracking script. i.e. the entry page is mydomain.com/ppc.php and the exit page is mydomain.com/ppc.php, with only 1 view? they don't even see the main page to which we redirect

am rather confused...

could it be that the page to which they are being redirected doesn't load quick enough (although only 55 kb)?

or a problem with the cookie (we are fully P3P compliant)?

appreciate the help :-)

[Receptional]

Some vague thoughts:

Is your redirect being blocked by pop-up blocker software?

Check the redirect works even if the cookie doesn't lay properly...

Is the proportion of Ov vs Google failure rates about the same or is one wildly different (in which case start investigating the traffic source not your software)

Has Google and Overture also identified these clicks as probably false positives and not charged you for them?

I experience up to 10% of "visitors" not fully loading the home page, so 20% is not beyond the realms of possibility. If the tracking system on the home page is clientside based, you might try putting the tracking script at the top of the page instead of the bottom... but make sure the page still loads if the trackimg server crashes! (infact, that might well be the problem).

[jamie]

receptional,

many thanks for the tips. very useful to have a second set of eyes looking at the problem. time for some testing!

cheers

[jamie]

hi receptional,

i rewrote the tracking script yesterday to fail-safe if any of the cookie or redirect functions didn't work (i am sure this was a cause of some failures).

i checked todays stats and there are still approx 20% people who only viewed the tracking page, but.... of these failures, 75% are AOL. there must be something odd / incompatible about the way AOL users connect, because all of the AOL visitors got stuck on the tracking script (only 1 out of 30 got past)

either i try to turn off all google ads in aol, because they are a complete waste of money ;-) or my code still needs tweaking especially for AOL users.

i am posting the code in the php forum: [webmasterworld.com...]

thanks loads for help receptional! :-)

<added>

receptional,

it has to do with the aol proxy servers and IP assignment. i sorted it out in the post above!