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1135

answers:

3

When Facebook drives traffic to an app, they often append &ref=whatever to the query string. This is useful for figuring out which integration points are working or not. I've figured out what some of these mean. For example:

ref=bookmarks - the user clicked on a bookmark.

ref=game_my_recent - the user clicked on the upper portion of the games dashboard.

Does anyone know what "ref=ts" means? It accounts for a ton of traffic. I've viewed source on pages all over common FB pages and cannot find a match for ant piece of content generated by any of my apps.

Same question, posted by me on the FB DEV FORUM: http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=54866

I'm thinking I'll get better answers here ;)

Thanks people,

Jose

+3  A: 

It means 'Top Search' (if you enter a query into the top, and then click on something, it will append ref=ts

webdestroya
Bingo... thanks webdestroyaAt first I saw "ref=search" when I tried this... but that's ONLY when the user hits the actual search "magnifying glass" icon. If the user types the app name and hits return OR clicks on the autocomplete result, then ref=ts gets appended.I guess thats kinda helpful, distinguishing between various kinds of facebook-facebook search.
jozecuervo
No problem. It's probably much more useful to Facebook (to see who is using what areas) than it is to you.
webdestroya
A: 

link text

franci
A: 

So it doesn't have anything to do with being a page/profile that somebody searches for or clicks on the most (i.e. top search in the sense that it's the most searched for)?

Also, jozecuervo, now it seems that after doing this

(continuation of last post) .. after doing this- "If the user types the app name and hits return OR clicks on the autocomplete result, then ref=ts gets appended" - #! gets appended. What are your thoughts on this?