AdWords clickthroughs with blank referer

How frequently are you getting them?

[ahbal]

Is anybody here getting blank referers? Is it a "glitch" or is is related to users' browser or some other special circumstances?

[toddski07]

I see these occasionally as well. Hope somebody can shed some light on this topic. In addition to "blank" referer issue I also have some where the referer is actually the link to page url instead of the true referer. Makes tracking conversions, roi, etc. a real pain in the butt sometimes.

Todd

[mcavic]

Same thing here - about 11% of my Adwords clicks this month have had blank referrals. I imagine that some of it is buggy browsers, and also I know there are some software packages that block referral strings.

[ahbal]

Tood and mcavic,

Thanks for confirming this. I'm new here. Are there any Google people around here? If yes, maybe they can shed some light on this.

[bird]

and also I know there are some software packages that block referral strings.

Referral passing is indeed the task of the client software. I'm not aware of a good way for the server to prevent it from happening. What you're seeing (as am I) is most likely the result of more people than before using personal firewall software that intercepts referrers between sites.

[ahbal]

Bird,

But we are talking here about "first generation" referer, i.e., the request string that the client browser submits. Google certainly knows this. Am I missing something here?

[redzone]

Many browsers don't pass referrer information. This has been inherent in the web since the early days. There was even a version of IE - 3.01 that had problems passing referrer info.

Today, there is a multitude of customized browsers.
We experience 10-15% of our click throughs, with "no" referrer info. And this percentage has been consistent for the last several years.

[mcavic]

Google certainly knows this

Google knows it, but it has no control over whether the browser passes it on as a referrer string.

[toddski07]

Good information so far about the blank referer issue. Thanks for the posts.

What about the referer showing the same thing as the link url?

Example:
RefererURL: [example.com...]
Initial Entry Page: [example.com...]

Do other people experience this issue? Guess I am looking for answers as to why this might happen.

Thanks.
Todd

[redzone]

toddski07,

This is another browser issue. Some browsers, rather than passing the referring information that generated the click through, pass the target URL in the referrer value...

Just another inherent problem, that we have no control over...

[ahbal]

Here is a typical "referer" string for AdWords clickthrough:

[google.com...]

This is the HTML query that the user submits to Google. We all agree here that in about 10% of the cases, this string is blank. It seems to me that the issue here is with Google, not with the users' browsers.

[redzone]

ahbal,

It's the user's browser that connects to your server, not Google....

[dwilson]

It's not just AdWords. My Geocities site logs have a percentage with no referer and another precentage with the screen resolution in place of the referer. I haven't yet figured out how to capitalize on links from 1024x768.

[redzone]

dwilson,

Geocities site logs, are a problem in themselves.... :)

They are inserting resolution into the referrer value, by accident....

[toddski07]

redzone...thanks for the information. After reading the previous posts I figured this must be a browser issue as well.

Todd

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Are there any Google people around here? If yes, maybe they can shed some light on this.

Just stopped by for a bit, ahbal. Sorry to say that this thread is beyond my realm, as I am not highly technical.

It really seems, though, that other list members have ably stepped in with the a lot of excellent info, as usual.

AWA

[edited by: AdWordsAdvisor at 7:29 pm (utc) on Dec. 23, 2003]

[GoogleGuy]

I'll be happy to ask somebody about this--this is the first time I've heard tell of blank referers. In theory, someone could pretend to be coming from Google, but actually be coming from some other page, or be using a non-standard browser. But I'll ask.

[jatar_k]

you can also use tracking urls and that will up the ability to see hits from adwords even though you don't get referer data.

In your account you can have the destination url setup something like

ht*p://www.yoursite.com/somepage.html?source=adw1
ht*p://www.yoursite.com/somepage.html?source=adw2

sometimes I want a bunch of ads pointed at the same page but, obviously, still need to know how they convert individually. Then when there is no referer I can still see the click and which ad it was from.

blank referers are just something you need to work around. As redzone said, I get about 10 - 15 % that don't show and it has absolutely nothing to do with google. It doesn't matter anyway, referer data can be faked just like most other things.

[uncle_bob]

A blank referer is quite common. The referer is just like any other header that the browser sends when requesting a page from a web server, but there is no requirement to send one.

Also it's not uncommon for a users proxy server to remove the referer header, I have my proxy configured just so. There is absolutely nothing on the webserver end you can do about it.

It certainly isn't googles fault that you aren't getting the referer header.

[ahbal]

uncle_bob and others,

> It certainly isn't googles fault that you aren't getting the referer header.

While it's true that some browsers block referer info, please note that an AdWords "link" links the user to the Google server, not directly to your web server. A typical AdWords link looks like this:

[google.com...]

where "ppp" is a pointer to the user's search query. When Google re-directs the user's query to yourSite.com, it adds the info relevant to the original query, including the search phrase.

Therefore, it is theoratically possible that some glitch in Google's software contributes to cases of blank referer.

I am looking forward to hear what Google's technical people say about this issue.

[mcavic]

AdWords "link" links the user to the Google server

True. But still, it's the browser's responsibility to transmit the proper referral url.

In a case where there is redirection, like Adwords, there are two ways for the browser to handle it. It could send the original URL (the one that produces the SERP). This is what most do.

Or it could transmit the URL of the redirection script. I think I saw that once or twice from a Mac browser. In this case, you wouldn't see the keywords.

[ahbal]

mcavic, others,

It seems to me that the sequence of events is like this:

1. The user's browser submits a search query to Google.com, with some key phrase.

2. Google.com responds with a web page that contains an AdWords ad. Embedded in the ad is a link with a URL that includes a pointer to a database record that stores info on the original query (#1 above), including the search phrase.

3. The user clicks this link, thereby submitting a new query to Google.com. The query includes a pointer to the original search query (#1).

4. Google now submits a query to yourSite.com, but somehow causes it to believe that the query came form the user's brower. The "referer" submitted to yourSite.com is the original search query (#1), retrieved from the database.

If this is a fair description of the events, aren't clickthroughs with blank referers caused by a bug in Google's software?

Ahbal

[mcavic]

4. Google now submits a query to yourSite.com, but somehow causes it to believe that the query came form the user's brower. The "referer" submitted to yourSite.com is the original search query (#1), retrieved from the database.

Google doesn't submit a query to the site. When you click the ad, the browser submits a query to Google, Google tallies that click, then tells the browser to go to yoursite.com.

The referer doesn't come from the database, but from the url that the browser visited.

[ahbal]

mcavic,

> The referer doesn't come from the database, but from the url that the browser visited.

It seems that you are right. Alas, if Google had used my "design", there will be no blank referers...

By the way, do you know if there is a way to retrieve the search phrase from the referer of "syndicated" AdWords? These look like this:

[pagead2.googlesyndication.com...]

I posted this question on another thread, but got no responses.

[mcavic]

I have a few of those googlesyndication referers in my log... There's a variable in the url called url=, which tells the url of the page the ad was on. That url may have search terms in it.

I don't know how you would get any info other than that.

[GoogleGuy]

Haven't uncovered anything at our end yet regarding blank referers. If someone has a log line or two they're willing to share, send it to webmaster [at] google.com and tell them to forward the log line to GoogleGuy. Please use the keyword blankreferer. Maybe getting some hard data would help nail down if it's something at our end..

[macrost]

Norton internet sec removes the referers. (sp? I can never spell it right.) Plus it also removes the titles from adsense ads, not sure about adwords ads, I think it does. Let me do some more experimenting when I get home.

Mac

[ahbal]

GoogleGuy,

I emailed three sample log entries. One "good" one, and two samples of Referer strings where the search phrase is not visible.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[ahbal]

mcavic,

I looked at some googlesyndication referers. The url= variable does show the site the ad was on, but no info on the search phrase.

[toddski07]

I looked at some googlesyndication referers. The url= variable does show the site the ad was on, but no info on the search phrase.

ahbal-

The reason you may not see a search phrase on a googlesyndication referer is because the page is not a search page and no search phrase even exists.

Your Google Ad can appear on a "normal" topic web page on a particular site therefore no "search phrase" is even used to find this page. When someone clicks on your Ad it will tell you the URL of the page the ad appeared on. A search phrase may have nothing to do with a googlesyndicated referer.

Sorry...kind of wordy!

Todd