Are They Lying: $_SERVER["HTTP_REFER ER"] Question

[Good Man]

Hi There

A client of mine has some banner ads placed on the net. Instead of relying
on the sites the ads are posted on tell us how many clicks they are
getting, we wanted to track the number ourselves.

I settled on using $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] to determine what referred the
user to our page. Sure enough, when testing, it all works (ie: i click the
ad on 'sample.com', which takes us to my page, and sure enough in our
tracking database i see 'sample.com' has had the visit count increased by
one.) I am looking for the string "sample.com " to make sure that the count
goes up whether or not the person visited sample.com via
http://www.sample.com or http://sample.com/

My question is: is $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] reliable? Essentially, a
place my clients have advertised with have said '80 people clicked your ad
this month' while our own stats show that only 15 people clicked it.

Is my method of tracking good/reliable enough to call them liars, or is my
method not too dependable?

[ECRIA Public Mail Buffer]

Rats, you're right. This always gets me...

dictionary.com says:

1 entry found for referer.
<World-Wide Web> A misspelling of "referrer" which somehow made it into the
HTTP standard. A given web page's referer (sic) is the URL of whatever web
page contains the link that the user followed to the current page. Most
browsers pass this information as part of a request.
(1998-10-19)

ECRIA
http://www.ecria.com

"Philip Olson" <ph*********@gm ail.com> wrote in message
news:11******** *************@g 49g2000cwa.goog legroups.com...

BTW it's HTTP_REFERER not HTTP_REFERRER :-)

[Malcolm Dew-Jones]

Good Man (he***@letsgo.c om) wrote:
: Hi There

: A client of mine has some banner ads placed on the net. Instead of relying
: on the sites the ads are posted on tell us how many clicks they are
: getting, we wanted to track the number ourselves.

: I settled on using $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] to determine what referred the
: user to our page. Sure enough, when testing, it all works (ie: i click the
: ad on 'sample.com', which takes us to my page, and sure enough in our
: tracking database i see 'sample.com' has had the visit count increased by
: one.) I am looking for the string "sample.com " to make sure that the count
: goes up whether or not the person visited sample.com via
: http://www.sample.com or http://sample.com/

: My question is: is $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] reliable? Essentially, a
: place my clients have advertised with have said '80 people clicked your ad
: this month' while our own stats show that only 15 people clicked it.

: Is my method of tracking good/reliable enough to call them liars, or is my
: method not too dependable?

In addition to what others have said, if the pages are cached anywhere
along the route (gateways and/or proxies) then you won't see all the
traffic.
--

This space not for rent.

[Bernie Cosell]

Good Man <he***@letsgo.c om> wrote:

} I settled on using $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] to determine what referred the
} user to our page. ...
}
} My question is: is $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] reliable? Essentially, a
} place my clients have advertised with have said '80 people clicked your ad
} this month' while our own stats show that only 15 people clicked it.

The short answer, as others have commented, is "no". But the longer answer
is that by and large it *IS* reliable: not very many folk know how to, or
have the facilities to, *change* the REFERER -- there are lots of
filters/firewalls/plugins, etc, that'll _block_ REFERER. so I'd say that
to first order, if you *GET* a REFERER, then it is _most_likely_ correct
[especially if you look for the specific REFERERs that you are expecting]
but you'll be left with the problem of how to sort out hits that come in
with no REFERER.

/Bernie\

--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
be****@fantasyf arm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--

[Samuel (lets dot monroe at gmail dot com)]

A good amount of spanish connections are behind a certain ISP's massive
proxy server too.

It's a long story.

[John Dunlop]

Good Man wrote:

A client of mine has some banner ads placed on the net. Instead of relying
on the sites the ads are posted on tell us how many clicks they are
getting, we wanted to track the number ourselves.

'Clicks', a marketroid's term, isn't it?

--
Jock