Is a php header redirect search-engine friendly? If not, what's the alternative for this scenario?

Question

I want to redirect users that arrive at my root url to another page that contains the referring site in the url, so that I can track which sources provide the most sales.

So if a user arrives at mysite.com from google, they will be redirected (using php header function) to mysite.com/page.php?ref=google.com. That way, I can see in my referral stats which search-engines are providing the most converting customers.

I already know how to do this, but my question is this: What would google and other search engines think of this? Would my search rankings suffer as a result of using a redirect? If so, how else can I achieve my aim?

Any help appreciated as always.

UPDATE: I'm tracking affilate sales. So the referral stats come from the sites I advertsise.

CONCLUSION: three helpful answers. Shame I can only accept one. Thanks guys.

Answer 1

Redirects in general are fine when used properly, but I'm not sure I understand your question. This seems like an unnecessary use of a redirect. Your analytics software should already be able to access the referrer without having to append it to the query string first - if not, get a new analytics setup!

Answer 2

PHP redirect does a 302.

I have used it for one of my domain enroller.in --> enroller.in/a/ . AFAIK search engine ranking on Google is not affected and my site is on the first page for our keywords. In search results it always shows original url.

Answer 3

Search engines SHOULD interpret the status codes sent along with the redirect like this:

• 302 = Temporary means the URL initially recorded is okay and should be listed in search results, just use the content of the target site for index

• 301 = Permanent means the URL is actually wrong, use the target URL for search results

So it depends on which URL you want to show up in search results. I assume you want the default 302 in this particular case. If not, use

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: X");