A URL that tells me where my visitor came from...

[AdamB]

What hosting package are you on?

All this info should be in your control panel for the domain you are hosting under 'stats' ??

[Lee]

the basic stuff is, but if i put a link www.mywebsite.co.uk in several places it doesnt nec tell me where that visitor came from...only if something has been done to the link at the site ive placed it on....I know it can be done, cos referral sites do it....not sure how though! So when I paste a link there must be a bit of extra code or summat...

[AJLA]

Extreme tracking tells you what country, county, IP etc

[pitkin2020]

the basic stuff is, but if i put a link www.mywebsite.co.uk in several places it doesnt nec tell me where that visitor came from...only if something has been done to the link at the site ive placed it on....I know it can be done, cos referral sites do it....not sure how though! So when I paste a link there must be a bit of extra code or summat...

Affiliate sites use sub domains or separate domains its the only accurate way to distinguish where a link has originated from. I use a lot of subdomains and if I compare how many actual redirections I have had with my ISP's tracking they vary wildly.

For example this month on my yell.com listing, which is www.yell.domain.com I have had 400 clicks yet my ISP tracking is showing 150 click throughs from yell. The end user can not see they are clicking yell.domain.com all they see is domain.com but I can accurately see how many times a click has come through from a specific domain.

[Lee]

so they see www.yourdomain.com but you set the link to say www.yell.yourdomain.com?

[pitkin2020]

yep, the end user has no idea because its a seamless transfer if you set the forwarding correctly. You can also do the same thing within your site by adding a page that links directly to you homepage but you just mask the URL. For example you could add www.mydomain.com/yell as a new page and use that link for the yell site, when you create the link it will display as www.mydomain.com but when its clicked it will take you to mydomain.com/yell which in turn if you set it correctly will take you seamlessly to mydomain.com. When you check your stats through your ISP then it will show how many clicks went to /yell.

[doldham]

Hi all,

Don't know this may be something worth considering? http://www.google.com/analytics/ You join for free, put a small piece of code in the header part of each page, and it will track all sorts of wonderful info - including where in the world they have logged in from, how long they spent and even which operating system they were using.

You can also create segments which allows you to say show me all visitors from this place between these dates - ideal for checking on the success of any advertising.

[mrs maggot]

i have quite a good breakdown on prestashop, everytime someone buys it tells me what they searched for, where from etc, and then i can take off loads more info at the press of a button - i like the big charts - look like nice slices of cake to me lol

[pitkin2020]

Hi all,

Don't know this may be something worth considering? http://www.google.com/analytics/ You join for free, put a small piece of code in the header part of each page, and it will track all sorts of wonderful info - including where in the world they have logged in from, how long they spent and even which operating system they were using.

You can also create segments which allows you to say show me all visitors from this place between these dates - ideal for checking on the success of any advertising.

Google have a lot of good tools that you should be using they can give a lot of insight to where things need to be changed etc.

i have quite a good breakdown on prestashop, everytime someone buys it tells me what they searched for, where from etc, and then i can take off loads more info at the press of a button - i like the big charts - look like nice slices of cake to me lol

Both great features and can tell you a lot about what people are doing on your site which is very helpful in dealing with your day to day running. Problem is if your not accurately tracking how people got to your site your just wasting money and time and not focusing your advertising and SEO efforts in the correct place.

You could effectively be paying out to yell.com £1500 a year because you think they are brining in over 50% of your visitors, when in fact they may only be brining in 5% and the other advert you thought wouldn't do well is in fact bringing in the majority.

If you set it up correctly it be an eye an opener. I know we will be ditching the yellow pages for next year as the domain we used for that was hardly hit so the return was pointless and not worth paying out.

[mrs maggot]

I dont pay for the prestashop stuff, its all in there as part of the package not yet heard of anyone getting value for money from yell / yellow pages (i dare say they will be in here again as last time - as they at least have a programme that sees when someone posts about them)