Track visits whit a "variable"

[mcwito]

Hello, I want to buy some traffic on "trafficholder".

 

This site have a large network of sellers and you paid for traffic niche, country, etc...

 

so just to know if they send me the correct amount of traffic I though on give they an URL like this:

 

www.mysite.com/?ref=traffic

 

so all traffic sent there will be counted.

 

whit this method I can I can differentiate that traffic is normal and what is from trafficholder (they send traffic from many many sites so it's difficult to track it whit google-analytics for example)

 

do you know guys how to do it?

 

if you can do a script for me (I think it's simple but my php knowledge is 0) I'll appreciate!!!

 

Thanks in advance

[.josh]

What you are wanting to do is called "campaign tracking" in the analytics worlds.  Google Analytics does this sort of thing very well.  You even use URL parameter(s) just as you have described.  You can go to GA's URL Builder tool to get started, and follow the relevant links on the page to learn how to see the data within GA.

 

If you insist on doing it yourself, the core script is relatively simple.  Just setup a database with 2 columns, one for campaign code and one for number of hits.  Then on your page, look for the variable and update your table accordingly.  GA does a lot more than this, and consequently offers you a lot more insight than just answering the basic "how many people came to my site on this code?" question, but if that's all you're looking to do...well I would still suggest you do it with GA if you already have GA on your site because why reinvent the wheel?

[mcwito]

What you are wanting to do is called "campaign tracking" in the analytics worlds.  Google Analytics does this sort of thing very well.  You even use URL parameter(s) just as you have described.  You can go to GA's URL Builder tool to get started, and follow the relevant links on the page to learn how to see the data within GA.

 

If you insist on doing it yourself, the core script is relatively simple.  Just setup a database with 2 columns, one for campaign code and one for number of hits.  Then on your page, look for the variable and update your table accordingly.  GA does a lot more than this, and consequently offers you a lot more insight than just answering the basic "how many people came to my site on this code?" question, but if that's all you're looking to do...well I would still suggest you do it with GA if you already have GA on your site because why reinvent the wheel?

 

WOW! I did not know that GA had that!

 

thank you, I'll take a look

[mcwito]

The problem whit GA is the statistics are not live...

 

I need live results.

 

How to code it manually?

 

Could you code it for me?

 

I really appreciate your help.

 

thank you.

[.josh]

The problem whit GA is the statistics are not live...

 

I need live results.

 

Yes, there is about a 24 hour delay.  But I don't believe you when you say you "need" live results.  Especially if you are already using GA...that 24 hour delay applies to everything else you are looking at already.  I happen to do web analytics for a living.  I have yet to meet a single client who "needed" live results.  Bosses expect reports at most on a weekly basis, but usually monthly, quarterly or yearly.  Big difference between need and want.  But if you somehow think you are the exception, there are other tracking tools out there besides GA that are live.  Yahoo Web Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst to name two.

 

How to code it manually?

 

Could you code it for me?

 

Dunno where you live but where I live it's not customary to ask someone to do work for free.