Is it possible to track which links redirected to my site? For example if it's a short URL http://alturl.com/6rp7w that redirects to http://www.mysite.com would I be able to track http://alturl.com/6rp7w?
+1
A:
It depends on whether or not that is the URL passed as the referrer. If you have a public site you can test with, set up a small url and point it to a test php page and put this:
<?php
echo getenv("HTTP_REFERER");
?>
If the URL is the same, then the referring URL is passing the small URL and you can track it. If the referrer shows up as http://alturl.com... then chances are you will not be able to track the actual URL.
cdburgess
2010-08-17 21:57:33
Yes that echos the page with the link but not something like `http://alturl.com/ta6s9` I guess there's no way to do it?
Cyber Junkie
2010-08-17 23:23:01
Correct. You can only get what the referring server is sending. So if they are not sending anything else, then you cannot retrieve that information when it sends a referrer. The upside is, typically these URL shortening things will use the same URL. So if you know the page they are hitting, you can do a reverse lookup so know which link it came in from (but that is out of scope for this question).
cdburgess
2010-08-17 23:40:40
reverse lookout. Thanks! I do some research on that!
Cyber Junkie
2010-08-18 00:19:25
+1
A:
Using the $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] variable is going to be the closest thing you'll get.
Joe Philllips
2010-08-17 21:58:34
Thanks but I need to find out the link instead of the site the link was posted on
Cyber Junkie
2010-08-17 23:14:10