Help Center Manage Your Account Technical

Do ad clicks have referrer information from my site?

Referring information can be useful to determine the source of traffic. However, this field is not a reliable source since it is controlled by the visitor's browser. Many browsers pass it on to the destination website intact while other browsers can block, change, or remove this field completely via built-in settings and add-ons. The most common reason is privacy.

When a visitor clicks on an ad on your website, he/she goes to the advertiser's website via our click tracking system. Our ad server records the click and visitor details first, then redirects the visitor to the final advertiser's landing page.

301 vs. 302

To redirect, our ad server issues a 301 or 302 HTTP header. Default redirection code is 301. You can change this setting in your account by following the menu My Account/Profile, click on the Settings tab and change Click Redirection Code.

A "301 Moved Permanently" redirection is more search-engine friendly as it helps the search spider/crawler correctly rank and locate advertiser's website. It is suggested by major search engines as the proper method for off-site redirection.

A "302 Found" redirection is a temporary redirection. It might confuse some search engines as to which is the actual content page to index. Content and PageRank issues can be associated to the usage of 302 redirections. By default, our ad server does not display ads to web spiders, bots so it is not an issue for most websites.

Iframe vs. JavaScript

The referrer information also depends on the serving code's format. If the ad is served via IFrame, the referrer URL is from our ad server. If the ad is served via JavaScript, the referrer URL is from your website. If you want your website to show up as the referrer source on advertiser's web analytics, you should use JavaScript, or use your own white label ad serving domain.

If your advertiser wants to better classify the incoming clicks, we recommend tagging the click/destination URLs with specific analytic parameters as a more reliable method to determine the source of traffic.

Other Articles in Technical

• How do I clear the browser cache and cookie?
• How do I detect device orientation for iPhone/iPad?
• How do I optimize my website for faster loading time?
• How do I record page views and unique visitors?
• How do I remove spyware and malware from my computer?
• How to convert a date string to a unix timestamp and vice versa?
• Why do some icons/images look different in Internet Explorer?

Search Help Center

Cannot find an answer for your question? Ask our Customer Care team

Related Articles

• How do I tag ad landing page URLs for Google Analytics?

  "Advertisers who use a web analytics software for their website can tag click URLs for their ads in order to ..."

  42% relevant in For Advertisers Overview
• Destination URL or Click URL

  "The destination URL, click URL, or landing page, is the website address that a visitor goes to when he/she clicks ..."

  35% relevant in Manage Your Account Banner, Richmedia, and Text Ads
• Visitor Tracking - Spiders/Bots

  "This list contains details about web spiders, bots or crawlers that accessed your webpages. These agents are computer programs which ..."

  25% relevant in Reporting Visitor Reports
• How can I support click tracking for external ad servers?

  "This feature is applicable to you if you place AdSpeed's serving code into another ad server and the other ad ..."

  20% relevant in Manage Your Account Serving Code