"Clean" tracking URLS

Hi,

Just reopening the use of tracking URLs . . .

I have seen posted around on the net that crawlers ignore the text that
appears after a hash/pound (#) sign in a URL. Has anyone tried linking to a
site using a URL similar to:

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

Does this count as a direct link? Could you see any reason why this wouldn't
work, assuming that you had some server-side craziness that counted these
URLs in a meaningful way. Actually . . . can you use Apache to
redirect/log/take action based on the presence of something in the request
URI?

Come on nerds, give it to me.

Em

Emme wrote:

Just reopening the use of tracking URLs . . .

I have seen posted around on the net that crawlers ignore the text
that appears after a hash/pound (#) sign in a URL. Has anyone tried
linking to a site using a URL similar to:

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

Does this count as a direct link? Could you see any reason why this
wouldn't work, assuming that you had some server-side craziness that
counted these URLs in a meaningful way. Actually . . . can you use
Apache to redirect/log/take action based on the presence of something
in the request URI?

Come on nerds, give it to me.

That's not a form of tracking and won't even appear in your web logs or
to server sided scripting.

It's a link to a named anchor somewhere in your page. If you have a
named anchor called 0001 (eg <a name="0001">) somewhere in your page,
then when the page is loaded the browser will jump down to it.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

"Chris Hope" <blackhole (AT) electrictoolbox (DOT) com> wrote

I have seen posted around on the net that crawlers ignore the text
that appears after a hash/pound (#) sign in a URL. Has anyone tried
linking to a site using a URL similar to:

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

Does this count as a direct link? Could you see any reason why this
wouldn't work, assuming that you had some server-side craziness that
counted these URLs in a meaningful way. Actually . . . can you use
Apache to redirect/log/take action based on the presence of something
in the request URI?

That's not a form of tracking and won't even appear in your web logs or
to server sided scripting.

It's a link to a named anchor somewhere in your page. If you have a
named anchor called 0001 (eg <a name="0001">) somewhere in your page,
then when the page is loaded the browser will jump down to it.

Hey Chris, yep I know it's an anchor . . . but I didn't realise that it
didn't make it to the web server. I was hoping I could write up a script
that would scour log files for it, but I see that's out of the question.

I'm trying to avoid the use of javascript to redirect the URL, or to use a
server side redirection script for logging clicks. It needs to be as
accurate as possible (Ha!) as it'll be used for billing.

Any other ideas?

Em

Emme wrote:

"Chris Hope" <blackhole (AT) electrictoolbox (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:d8lufk$ub8$1 (AT) lust (DOT) ihug.co.nz...
I have seen posted around on the net that crawlers ignore the text
that appears after a hash/pound (#) sign in a URL. Has anyone tried
linking to a site using a URL similar to:

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking -
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

Does this count as a direct link? Could you see any reason why this
wouldn't work, assuming that you had some server-side craziness
that counted these URLs in a meaningful way. Actually . . . can you
use Apache to redirect/log/take action based on the presence of
something in the request URI?

That's not a form of tracking and won't even appear in your web logs
or to server sided scripting.

It's a link to a named anchor somewhere in your page. If you have a
named anchor called 0001 (eg <a name="0001">) somewhere in your page,
then when the page is loaded the browser will jump down to it.

Hey Chris, yep I know it's an anchor . . . but I didn't realise that
it didn't make it to the web server. I was hoping I could write up a
script that would scour log files for it, but I see that's out of the
question.

I'm trying to avoid the use of javascript to redirect the URL, or to
use a server side redirection script for logging clicks. It needs to
be as accurate as possible (Ha!) as it'll be used for billing.

Any other ideas?

You want it like this:
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html?foo=bar
OR
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html?foo

If all you're going to do is look through the log files then you don't
need to do anything other than the above, otherwise you'd need some
sort of scripting language (eg perl, php, vbscript, coldfusion etc) in
there working with the variables passed in as part of the url and doing
something nifty behind the scenes.

--
Chris Hope | www.electrictoolbox.com | www.linuxcdmall.com

"Chris Hope" <blackhole (AT) electrictoolbox (DOT) com> wrote

Emme wrote:


"Chris Hope" <blackhole (AT) electrictoolbox (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:d8lufk$ub8$1 (AT) lust (DOT) ihug.co.nz...
I have seen posted around on the net that crawlers ignore the text
that appears after a hash/pound (#) sign in a URL. Has anyone tried
linking to a site using a URL similar to:

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking -
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

Does this count as a direct link? Could you see any reason why this
wouldn't work, assuming that you had some server-side craziness
that counted these URLs in a meaningful way. Actually . . . can you
use Apache to redirect/log/take action based on the presence of
something in the request URI?

That's not a form of tracking and won't even appear in your web logs
or to server sided scripting.

It's a link to a named anchor somewhere in your page. If you have a
named anchor called 0001 (eg <a name="0001">) somewhere in your page,
then when the page is loaded the browser will jump down to it.

Hey Chris, yep I know it's an anchor . . . but I didn't realise that
it didn't make it to the web server. I was hoping I could write up a
script that would scour log files for it, but I see that's out of the
question.

I'm trying to avoid the use of javascript to redirect the URL, or to
use a server side redirection script for logging clicks. It needs to
be as accurate as possible (Ha!) as it'll be used for billing.

Any other ideas?

You want it like this:
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html?foo=bar
OR
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html?foo

If all you're going to do is look through the log files then you don't
need to do anything other than the above, otherwise you'd need some
sort of scripting language (eg perl, php, vbscript, coldfusion etc) in
there working with the variables passed in as part of the url and doing
something nifty behind the scenes.

Aha! But here we come to the crux of my problem!

I want to be able to track a number of URLs across a number of sites (as I'm
being charged!). A few of these sites have significant page rank, which I
would like to benefit from.

As I understand it, if the links that appear on these big sites look like
this:

http://www.mysiste.com.au/products/p...l?foo=bigsiteA
http://www.mysiste.com.au/products/p...l?foo=bigsiteB

these will be treated as separate URLs by ol' Googley Eyes and thus I will
not benefit from referred PageRank as much as if they linked to the URLs as
just http://www.mysiste.com.au/products/product1.html. In other words, my
IBLs will be FUBAR.

Am I making sense? I have been accused of speaking in random tongues before.
But then you're a Kiwi, so you should catch on, bro.

Emme wrote:

http://www.mysiste.com.au/products/p...l?foo=bigsiteA
http://www.mysiste.com.au/products/p...l?foo=bigsiteB

301 redirect all to product1.html

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

Emme wrote:

Hi,

Just reopening the use of tracking URLs . . .

I have seen posted around on the net that crawlers ignore the text that
appears after a hash/pound (#) sign in a URL. Has anyone tried linking
to a
site using a URL similar to:

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

Does this count as a direct link? Could you see any reason why this
wouldn't
work, assuming that you had some server-side craziness that counted
these
URLs in a meaningful way. Actually . . . can you use Apache to
redirect/log/take action based on the presence of something in the
request
URI?

Come on nerds, give it to me.

Em

The answer depends on what is it that you are trying to achieve with the
tracking: are you trying to just count the clicks or you want to count
them AND receive the PR benefit of a straight links?

I have a feeling you are looking for the latter. In this regard, crawlers
do not ignore anything! They simply follow to
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001, and if that page
happens to reply OK, it will get indexed as ...product.html%230001. In
terms of PR is a different page from ...product.html, so no benefit here.


Sincerely,
Dmitri
http://www.1-script.com/install/
Check out my CGI scripts installation offer
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"www.1-script.com" <info_at_1-script_dot_com (AT) foo (DOT) com> wrote

Clean URL - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html

URL with tracking - http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001

The answer depends on what is it that you are trying to achieve with the
tracking: are you trying to just count the clicks or you want to count
them AND receive the PR benefit of a straight links?

I have a feeling you are looking for the latter. In this regard, crawlers
do not ignore anything! They simply follow to
http://www.mysite.com/products/product1.html#0001, and if that page
happens to reply OK, it will get indexed as ...product.html%230001. In
terms of PR is a different page from ...product.html, so no benefit here.

Dear Dmitri,

God bless you. That's exactly what I meant. But damn your eyes for
confirming my suspicions.

Back to the drawing board . . .

Em