Recommend a simple way to track different referral clickthroughs to a page I don't own?

November 16, 2010 4:03 AM

Is there an easy, free way for me to track click referrals to a page I don't own? I know bit.ly shows this information but only aggregate data. I need to be able to set multiple redirect links and get unique clickthrough data for each of them. Full explanation inside.

I'm selling tickets online for a party using Brown Paper Tickets. They're great, very fluffy, very cheap... but unfortunately they don't have any kind of referral tracking system yet.

I need to track referral clickthroughs so that I know whether partner A is generating more interest than partner B.

(It would be nice to know if partner A is generating more sales than partner B, which is something Ticketweb enables me to follow with their REFID referral tracking system, but I'm not expecting that feature. Right now it would be enough to know who is generating the most demand.)

In the past I have used Bit.ly, which at least allows me to see how many clicks I get on the Bit.ly link. But their stats are in aggregate. So even if I create multiple Bit.ly URLs pointing towards the ticket page, it will only show me the total number of clicks - not the clicks for Partner A and partner B?

I don't own the ticket page so I can't put analytics on it. I'm looking for something as easy as Bit.ly but that would allow me to track different clickthrough links and see how many clicks each generated.

Any ideas?

posted by skylar to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: So even if I create multiple Bit.ly URLs pointing towards the ticket page, it will only show me the total number of clicks - not the clicks for Partner A and partner B?

Can you add some fake variables to the URL, and create bit.ly links to each one?

For example, say you want to track clicks to (grabbing a URL quickly from the site):

http://uk.brownpapertickets.com/event/133554

Create a bit.ly link to:

http://uk.brownpapertickets.com/event/133554?partner=A

And another one to:

http://uk.brownpapertickets.com/event/133554?partner=B

A quick test seems to show me that (a) brownpapertickets will ignore the extra "partner" variable and (b) separate bit.ly URLs are created, with separate stats, for each one.
posted by Jimbob at 4:10 AM on November 16, 2010

Response by poster: BRILLIANT thinking JimBob - I'm going to check that now.
posted by skylar at 4:21 AM on November 16, 2010

Response by poster: Still if anyone else has suggestions on how I can do this for sites that are not like Brown Paper Tickets and do not accept question marks after them (eg Facebook) then let me know.
posted by skylar at 11:32 PM on November 17, 2010