Track inbound links?

March 9, 2006 10:41 AM

So, I'd like to track specific links into my site -- links I generate but aren't browser-based (eg, links in an email or RSS feed). Sites like Cool Hunting and Fark use a tracking method on their outbound links which looks like what I'm envisioning. I could write something from scratch, but is there an existing application that does it for me?

Free is nice, but not required.

posted by The Baby Jesus to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I believe that Google Analytics will do this.
posted by Good Brain at 11:23 AM on March 9, 2006

I thought Google Analytics was supposed to be weak in the area of referrer information even with websites. Will it automatically be able to differentiate between multiple sources with no referrer information (like an offline RSS reader)?
posted by ducksauce at 11:50 AM on March 9, 2006

Oh, and if I were going to do it I would use a combination manual ID generation/Google Analytics. For example, if you had a link to a page called test.html, I would generate the following three links:
http://yoursite/test.html?ID=none
http://yoursite/test.html?ID=RSS
http://yoursite/test.html?ID=partner011

Then track by putting this code in the footer:
<script>
urchinTracker('/links/incoming/' + location.href.split('?ID=')[1]);
</script>

Or something like that.

But I don't know if Google Analytics can just handle all that on its own or not, so I'd probably be overdoing it.
posted by ducksauce at 11:54 AM on March 9, 2006