Do You Understand The Importance of Referrer Logs?
September 24, 2008 by Joseph · Leave a Comment
The Importance of Referrer Logs
Referrer logging lets website owners find out where their visitors have arrived at their sites from. This data is useful for both marketing and security purposes. You’ll be able to find out which search engine was used to find your website or whether your visitors came there from a link on another website; and if so, which site contained this link.
Most hosting accounts will not include referrer logs by default, but you can typically subscribe to this service for an additional fee. If your web hosting company doesn’t offer graphical representations of the referrer logs, you can also look at these logs by logging into your web host’s server using FTP programs such as these:
The log file will be available on the server which you can view or download to look at on your own computer. There are some log analysis tools which can be used to create a graphical report from these logs which is easier to interpret. Some of the better tools are:
You can also examine your log files using Word, Word Perfect, Notepad or Wordpad. This is information which is very important for your business’ marketing strategy – make use of it.
Besides telling you where your visitors have arrived from, referrer logs let you know which keywords or key phrases your visitor used to find your site.
Some people feel that referrer information constitutes a privacy violation – so some browsers let users avoid sending this information, as do web proxies and firewalls. This can cause problems for some users, since there are sites which block access to users who do not send this information – this is to prevent deep linking and unauthorized bandwidth usage.
Proxy software often gives the top-level URL of the target site as the referrer, which prevents the user from being blocked while still protecting the user’s privacy. The referrer can be faked, so keep in mind that your referrer logs should be looked at carefully.
