EliteRides posted this at 23:52 — 21st November 2005.
Just curious in how you guys ( and girls 
) incorporate tracking pixels into your sites. I took over managing a site for a company and the current tracking pixels on their site for their clients are just loaded each time for every tracking pixel. In other words, every affiliates' tracking pixel is loaded every time the final page is loaded... even if their business didn't refer the sale.
Just curious how others have theirs structured to load only from their respective referring url.
Roo posted this at 04:31 — 22nd November 2005.
She has: 840 posts
Joined: Apr 1999
What the heck is a tracking pixel? I've never heard of such a thing.
Busy posted this at 10:12 — 22nd November 2005.
He has: 6,151 posts
Joined: May 2001
a tracking pixel is a form of spyware tracking, also used in emails - just a 1x1 pixel image to count/track people
Use a real stats program that doesnt rely on nasty tricks like this.
Most decent hosts offer at least one kind of stats program (my basic host has four), if they are limited they are easy enough to download and install
bja888 (not verified) posted this at 10:36 — 22nd November 2005.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
The wonders of spam
EliteRides posted this at 15:19 — 22nd November 2005.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
You're missing it though. The clients of the company are requesting this so they can see the number of hits, that they referred, in their web logs. If it were up to me, of course I would use a stats program.
Is there a way to load an image (pixel) only if the url contains leadid=referrer1... then it would load referrer1.gif? Maybe with some sort of php.
<img src="{leadid}">'And then the page would contain:referrer1=http://www.referral1.com/pixel.gif
referrer2=http://www.referral2.com/pixel.gif
referrer3=http://www.referral3.com/pixel.gif
EliteRides.com
chrishirst posted this at 16:55 — 22nd November 2005.
He has: 379 posts
Joined: Apr 2005
It's much easier and less risky with a database and let the affiliates have a logon to check their stats.
EliteRides posted this at 17:40 — 22nd November 2005.
They have: 4 posts
Joined: Nov 2005
I understand and agree. If it were my choice I would totally go with an affiliate script. However, this is the request of existing clients. Can't exactly turn away your customers' requests. I did find a way to accomplish this with PHP. Thanks though for everyone's replies.
EliteRides.com
mairving posted this at 20:24 — 22nd November 2005.
They have: 2,256 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
A couple of things to keep in mind. One is that people don't like to be tracked like this and can become very irritated if they find out. The second is that it is easily blocked in email clients. Even Outlook 2003 by default blocks all images from being downloaded by default so as to avoid the tracking.
Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
Greg K posted this at 22:13 — 22nd November 2005.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
We have the same type of thing with our site using AffiliateShop.com.
However, even though it can do it, we did not set ours up for people to just sign up and spam away their affiliate link. We have sales people that set up appointments with business owners, or host free seminars that people sign up for, and they give the url out that way.
On our initial home page, if you are using the affiliate's link, it will call an image from Affiliate shop, which activates a cookie. Then if you do sign up, on the "confirmation" page it calls another image, triggering the sale with Affiliate Shop.
Our sales people can log into their accounts, and see how many people folowed their affiliate URL, and also how many signed up from it as well. It works pretty well in testing, ust need to get the "recurring billing" to properly call the image (they get $10 on initial signup, $5 each recurring payment until they cancel)
Now of course, this all is based on the end user allowing cookies. Again, people can go to our site and sign up to become an affiliate, but mainly this is for the people directly presenting the software to people who sign up or request the information.
I persoanally hate spam selling. However, I think this explanation will help others understand where the usefullness of this type of tracking comes into play.
Now, on to the question at hand, with PHP, this is possible to do. Assuming this is what you are talking about:
then you could have soemthing like
<?php
switch ($_POST['leadid']) {
case 'referrer1':
$refimage = 'http://www.referral1.com/pixel.gif';
break;
case 'referrer2':
$refimage = 'http://www.referral2.com/pixel.gif';
break;
case 'referrer3':
$refimage = 'http://www.referral3.com/pixel.gif';
break;
case 'referrer4':
$refimage = 'http://www.referral4.com/pixel.gif';
break;
default:
// Put a copy of a blank image on your site for displaying
// when there is no referer.
$refimage = 'http://www.yourdomain.com/pixel.gif';
break;
}
<img src=\"= $refimage \" alt=\"\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" border=\"0\">
?>
I think this should work. Note, if you have a ton of possible referers, you may want to use something other than the switch statement, perhaps check for it in a database, etc.
Additionally, I would recomend setting it up to use http://www.domain.com/referrer1 instead (if you want to do that, I'll look up the thread on here on how to do it and post a link)
-Greg
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