Posted by Bernie Cosell on 06/14/05 16:47

Good Man <heyho@letsgo.com> wrote:

} I settled on using $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] to determine what referred the
} user to our page. ...
}
} My question is: is $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERRER'] reliable? Essentially, a
} place my clients have advertised with have said '80 people clicked your ad
} this month' while our own stats show that only 15 people clicked it.

The short answer, as others have commented, is "no". But the longer answer
is that by and large it *IS* reliable: not very many folk know how to, or
have the facilities to, *change* the REFERER -- there are lots of
filters/firewalls/plugins, etc, that'll _block_ REFERER. so I'd say that
to first order, if you *GET* a REFERER, then it is _most_likely_ correct
[especially if you look for the specific REFERERs that you are expecting]
but you'll be left with the problem of how to sort out hits that come in
with no REFERER.

/Bernie\

--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--

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