referrer links

[SarverSystems]

Hey guys.

I'd like to give other LAN websites a link to our site, but I want to be able to track the hits it generates from each site.

How would I do this?

Are there any free utilities to do it for me?

 

[Antilles20]

Well, I'm a PHP guy, so I would use the $HTTP_REFERER environment variable and record it to a database, so that all hits can be tallied and converted into percentages, statistics... whatever you want. You should know that the $HTTP_REFERER variable is not foolproof - it will only contain the referring address if the visiting user hasn't decided to disable that in his/her browser (and that would be the case no matter which language or utility you decide to use).

As for a ready-made tool, I don't know of any offhand but this kind of information is common for site administrators to want access to, so I'm positive that there's a pretty big selection out there. I'd start with www.sourceforge.net and see what comes up.

 

[Lethal]

Referrers are standard in just about every stats package. Many hosts provide some flavor of stats (such as webtrends) with your hosting. There are also tools to help you analyze your raw logs.

There are various free stats packages. eXTReMe tracker is one that gives you detail on the last 20 referrers but cumulative totals on all referrers.

 

[tim_m]

another good stats thingy is awstats

 

[SarverSystems]

I have a web counter on the page now that shows basic stats.

I was hoping for more along the lines of:

www.xxx.com = 45 this week
www.yyy.com = 12 this week
www.zzz.com = 99 this week

 

[Ruckus]

sounds like you want a pay per click affiliate programs for your site. Ive seen em not sure of any free ones though. where each referer has a

http://www.yourdomain.com?001xx

to signify who the referal comes from.