Forum Moderators: DixonJones
Basically lets say that we are advertising a keyword in Overture or Adwords to go to www.mydomain.com
Usually the referer for someone coming from this would say "google" or "msn" or whatever.
What i have done is put in an extra redirect page in between, so my URL in overture and adwords have been changed to:
www.myotherdomain.com/redirect.asp?url=www.mydomain.com
this should theoretically force the logs to show www.myotherdomain.com as the referer correct?
well it isnt so for some weird reason. I have just had a look at our raw log files and i can only see a few people coming in through these redirect pages from paid clicks. The logs are still showing loads of people coming in from google (paid keywords) instead of the redirection page i set up? If i open up the google search page in question and double check the URL in the sponsored listing it is pointing to the redirection page. Why are the logs still registering google instead of my redirection page in refferer?
Help?
What i have found out:
If you are using a normal response.redirect in your redirection page (asp), the referer entry that gets logged in the webserver logfile will still show google as the referer instead of the redirecting page.
I found that you can use a meta refresh redirect, and this will remove google from the referer field, but it will not put anything else in it.
I am happy as long as google isnt showing as the referer for this (separating paid vs organic visitors), but if anyone can suggest a better solution pelase post.
The simplist solution is to use tracking URL's at Google, and then let your analysis program track both the referring and local URL's. Any request that comes from the ad will have the tracking URL, while any organic search with have the organic URL. I can't think of an easier way to seperate your referrals.
Larry
