ConverTastictm

Where are Your Conversions REALLY Coming From?

The Referrer Part of the Server-Log Entry

The referrer is the most important part of the server-log entry. However, many hosting companies don't log it. If you don't see the referrer in your logs, call your hosting company immediately. They might be able to flip a switch and turn it on for you. They may also want to charge you a fee. If they say they can't do it, then you need to start looking for a new home for your website. Without the referrer, you will have no way of knowing where the bulk of your traffic is coming from.

The referrer is found after the bytes-sent number in the Apache Combined Log Format that most servers use. If you did a Google search to find ConverTastic with the FireFox browser, our server log would have a referrer that looked something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox&q=conversion+tracking

You will often see a bunch of stuff in the referrer, but you don't have to decipher it all. In the above example, we would chalk you up as a "Google Organic" search conversion. "Organic" search means just a plain search where you went to google.com and typed in "conversion tracking". As we will see below, a click on a Google AdWords ad looks a lot different. The search-term is also easy to spot. Google uses "q=" to identify it. The "+" in between "conversion" and "tracking" indicates that a space was typed.

An AdWords referrer looks something like this:

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=

...and miles of more stuff. Again, you don't need to decipher everything, but you can sometimes spot what site was running the ad, and even what the user searched for on that site. But these should always be counted as AdWords conversions. You should also be putting source tags on your AdWords URL's so that you can tell what campaign they came from by looking at the request. However, sometimes other web sites will create links with your AdWords URL's. For example, somebody might copy the link from the AdWords ad, and then post it as a recommendation to a forum. When other people click the link in the forum, your source tag will still be there, and it will look like an AdWords conversion. You might want to credit AdWords, or the site running the forum, or split the credit between them for the conversion. But you need to look at the referrer to tell that this has happened.

A plain site-link referrer looks like this:

http://www.pure-mac.com/downloads/covertasticdl.html

That's what we would see in our log if you found ConverTastic on Pure-Mac.com.

If the referrer is blank, you will just see "-" in the log file. These are unsolvable cases because your customer typed your URL into her browser instead of clicking a link. Unless it was a highly specific URL, you won't know how she found out about your site. It could be any number things, such as she might have seen your site being discussed in a forum with no links, and then typed it into her browser, etc.

You will also see a blank referrer if it is somebody who had your site bookmarked. They may have first found your site back before you started saving your logs.

If somebody just googled-up your site by the name of your company or product, then they likely heard about it from a friend, in a discussion group, or by some other "Word of Mouth" means. While these types of conversions don't help you refine your ad spending, they do indeed indicate that you are getting some buzz which is way better than advertising.