Non referred hits

[rincewind]

Hi,
Is there anyway to check if non referred hits your page receives came from your page being bookmarked or added to favourites as apposed to just being typed into the address bar?
Thanks

[goofball]

I could be wrong about this, but I think the answer is No.
When you go to a web page by clicking on a bookmark/favorite, your browser just takes the URL from that shortcut link and injects it into the address bar. At that point, it's just as if you typed the URL in the address bar yourself.

Idea: If you write in a JavaScript link on your page that someone can click to make bookmark, you can specify an altered URL that includes a tracking string.

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
document.write('<a href="javascript:window.external.AddFavorite(\\''+document.location.href+'?tracking_string\\',\\''+documen t.title+'\\');">Bookmark Page</a>');
//-->
</script>


Note that this only works in IE. I don't think Netscape lets you add bookmarks via JavaScript. (If I am wrong PLEEZ tell me- I would absolutely love to know how). *Also note that in the above code, href="javascript: is wrong - I know. Some security feature of these forums must have put that space in there.

Anyway, you could check your access_log or monthly traffic reports for entries that contain your ?tracking_string and that would tell you how many hits you got from your custom bookmark.

[rincewind]

Thanks,
I have too many netscape users to use that in case it doesn't work for them but thanks for the info,
cheers!

[goofball]

I had another idea - this will work if:

1. your host is unix-based and running Apache, Mosaic, or similar server software.
2. you can configure your own .htaccess and/or httpd.conf files.

Load the rewrite engine in the http.conf file:
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Then, in either the httpd.conf file or the root directory's .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^bookmark
RewriteRule ^(.*\.html?)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1?bookmark [L,R]


What this does is adds the query string "?bookmark" to the end of every URL that calls an .htm or .html page by redirecting the http request - and it won't effect how a browser views the page. But when the browser bookmarks a page (Netscape, IE, or whatever) by its own built-in bookmarking feature, the url + query string will end up in the bookmark shortcut. There's your custom bookmark link.

Then when you run the traffic statistics, just count all the hits that include "?bookmark" MINUS the hits that were redirected. That will give you the number of times someone clicked on your bookmark to get to your site.

I know it may be more trouble than it's worth, but little things like this are sometimes fun to do "just because."

Cheers

[rincewind]

Thanks again,
I'll try that,
cheers