Free Ad Tracking Using a PHP Redirect Script
Free Ad Tracking is possible and it has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages or disadvantages depend on the free ad tracking method you use. This post will discuss using a PHP URL redirect script. Let’s first state what PHP is. PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. This confuses many people because the first word of the acronym is the acronym. This type of acronym is called a recursive acronym. PHP is becoming the future of scripting languages for many webmasters because it is both fast and stable. The PHP script we will be using to redirect our URL is:
- Create a folder called Recommends or something similar on your hard drive.
- Create another folder with a short but descriptive name within recommends that describes what you are directing to but doesn’t make it obvious enough for the visitor to guess the destination. I’ll use phpadtrack in this example.
- Copy the above script into Notepad or some other text editor and replace http://www.adtrackingwebsite.com/adtracking/index.html with your URL.
- Save the file in the /Recommends/phpadtrack/ folder making sure it is named index.php.
- Upload the Recommends folder and its contents to your server using your favorite FTP Client or the File Manager built into cpanel.
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The URL you give out in your newsletter, ads or other promotions would look something like http://www.adtrackingwebsite.com/Recommends/phpadtrack/index.php or http://www.adtrackingwebsite.com/Recommends/phpadtrack/. As you can see from the URL, I have my domain name being branded, I let my prospects know I recommend this and it is impossible to guess the destination URL. You will be able to see how many hits this link gets by checking the stats in cpanel of your hosting account for your site. These stats will be the raw total and not unique visitors but it will give you some idea of how effective your promotion is without spending any extra cash. There are other ways to do your ad tracking for free but I’ll cover some of them in other posts.
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