Log web page viewing sequence - even after BACK pressed

Question

I have a log of web pages viewed by users. This is to facilitate diagnosis of problems, and review user activity (which can be revealing! and lead to improvements to the site)

I log lots of data to enable recreating what the user did - all the Form variables, cookies, etc.

I also log when the page finished rendering in the clients browser (with a WebBot image).

One of the things that I have difficulty with is where the user presses BACK and then picks a different route to continue their browsing from.

e.g. from the log I can see that the user viewed PageA, PageB then PageC - but there may be no route from PageB to PageC and actually the user went BACK to PageA and then forward to PageC.

I have a unique ID for each page rendered, which I could use as a "Came From" indicator.

One thought I had was to store that ID in a cookie (via Javascript). But before I start trying stuff I'd appreciate any advice you have.

Answer 1

You could use HTTP's Referer header to try and find where the user has come from, but as always you cannot trust client data. It could be missing or spoofed, so don't rely too heavily on this method