Tracing a link

[Clintw]

One of my customers has ask me to put tracer on one of the links. He wants to put a link on his site that links to a new partner of his, but he wants his partner to know the link came from his site. The partner does not have an affiliate program setup or anything like that. I was wondering what is my best way of doing this and do you recommend any tracing scripts.

thanks,

Clint Walker
http://www.qualitydg.com

[Justin]

Or link like so:

http://yoursite.com?Linked_from_my_site

This way you can simply count it up in your stats (or you can use the referer logs)...

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest (http://www.FutureQuest.net/index.php) Support

[turnkey]

One simple way for him would be to setup a "catcher page" on the receiving side that would then do a simple redirect to the main page. Then his normal web stats could be used to review how many hits the catcher page has. Of course the link from the partner would be to the catcher page.

Here's the format for a redirect:

<META HTTP-EQUIV=&quot;Refresh&quot; CONTENT=&quot;0; URL=http://www.page_to_redirect_to&quot;>

This goes at the top of your HTML. You might put a link in the body of the page in case someone has a very old browser and it doesn't take them to the new page.
[nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp]
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http://www.turnkey-commerce.com

[turnkey]

I forgot to mention but one other way to do the redirects is through the .htaccess file, which can define what happens if a hit comes with a strange URL, e.g.:

[nbsp][nbsp]http://www.site.com/INCOMING_LINK_FROM_PARTNER

The .htaccess can be defined to redirect:

ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html
Redirect /INCOMING_LINK_FROM_PARTNER http://www.site.com

The log files will show hits with INCOMING_LINK_FROM_PARTNER and can be counted.
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http://www.turnkey-commerce.com

[Jason]

I use a very basic free CGI program called ClickCount to do something like what you are describing. You can get the program at http://www.staff.net/cgi-scripts/. It's very very easy to set up and use, and does quite a lot for what it is.

[John Kennett]

Clint

Another CGI solution that you might like to look at is AXS <http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs/>

It's a free script, and is *very* easy to set up! I use it on all my external links on www.rib.net (http://www.rib.net) -- it's amazing to discover how many links people follow!

John