I have several ppc campaigns that are active at the moment. I am noticing that it is very hard to track where my inquiries and orders are coming from. When you get decent placement in a PPC, your listing winds up showing up in dozens of other search engines, and it is almost impossible to figure out where they are coming from!

My question is this: does anyone know of a php (or any type) script that will keep track of this for me? My thinking is this - i can give ppc1 a unique URL such as www.domain.php/?custid=ppc1 . Then, there would be a cookie on the users machine that will tell me when he makes an inquiry or order.

I realize that I could create copies of the site to track this, but that is a messy solution.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

David Harris

You could add in some PHP code that records the URL of the site they came from into a file.

Right, this is what I am trying to do. Do you know of a script? And I would need one that would actually track the customer when they sign up and submit forms.

Thanks for the response!

EDIT: Sorry, this is ASP. I don't know PHP yet, but I imagine you can do something similar.

For our referrers, we use the QueryString to figure out where they're from, since the referrer variable is so flaky.

--

if Request.QueryString = "google" then
Session("Referrer") = "google.com"
Response.Redirect "http://yourwebsite.com"
elseif Request.QueryString = "yahoo" then
Session("Referrer") = "yahoo.com"
Response.Redirect "http://yourwebsite.com"
end if

Response.Redirect "http://yourwebsite.com"

--

If you save this as refer.asp, and a link is clicked that links to http://yourwebsite.com/refer.asp?google, it stores it in a session variable that the referrer was Google, then redirects it to http://yourwebsite.com. You can then work with it from there or expand it to store in a database, redirect to certain pages for certain referrers, etc.

Mike

With http://www.3dstats.com you can track the orders.

For example :
-------------

1) Paste a 3dstats tracker code on your confirmation page. (Page displayed
when the transaction is accepted).
Give a name at this tracker : "Order page"

2) www.domain.php/?custid=ppc1,
Paste a 3dstats tracker on this page, you can customize the tracker name, In php, read the variable
custid and give this value (ppc1) as name of the tracker.

After that, you will get (in clicking on the visitor profile) on the "Order page"
report all the information about your customers.

- Date of their first visit.
- First page viewed + navigation report.
- First Referring url.
- Date of their previous visits + the navigation report for every visit.
- All page viewed by this custormer.
- IP, hostname, OS, screen resolution.

:stickout

Jchristophe .

Yes! This is exactly what I am looking for! A few questions :

You said: (sorry, i cant figure out how to quote on here!)

"After that, you will get (in clicking on the visitor profile) on the "Order page"
report all the information about your customers. "

Do you mean there is an admin page that has visitor profiles? Or is it submitted with the order form?

What is a "first referring URL?" Is this the original PPC that listed the site? Do they get this from the code that I enter?

Thanks for the help!!!

Regards,
David

Sorry for all of the questions - I am going to check out the script on the site.

Hello,

Profile is given by 3dstats for each visits. 3dstats give at each visitor a unique ID number and record all information about the visitor.

Example of a visit profile:

Visitor Detail ID: 11419 29 July 2002
HostName : line-73-233.dial.freestart.hu
IP : 213.197.73.233
Last Visit : 1 Day(s)
First Visit : 28 July 2002
Country: Hungary [Hungarian]
Browser: MSIE [Win ME]
Screen Res: 1024x768 65,536 colors (16 bit)
Javascript: Enabled
Page Views: 4
File Downloaded: 0
Daily Visits: 1
Visit Length: 4 minute(s) 13 second
Entry Page: Index
Exit Page: hopkins fbi official site
Referring URL: No

Navigation Report
Time Page
21:25: 0 Index
21:25:10 Walkthrough & Spoiler of Hopkins FBI
21:29: 4 Index
21:29:13 hopkins fbi official site

In clicking on the date of the first visit you will get the profile of the first visit:

If the first page viewed by the visitor is PPC1, you will know that the visitor was sent by the PPC1 seach engine.
Normally you should l get as referring url www.PPC1.com?search=keywords .