Wealth From Your Referrer Logs

Referrer logs are used to identify where your visitors have come from. You can find out what search engine the user came from, what website or even mail program they clicked on a link to your site from. This type of log is one of the most important logs you can have as a marketer because it can help you specify what advertising or affiliates are working well for you.

A lot of low cost or free web servers do not offer access to the raw referrer logs. If your web host does not offer a visual access program to your referrer logs you can access them typically by using a free ftp software available at any major software download site like download.com. When you access your website via ftp you should see a “logs” folder somewhere, this should contain your referrer log file. There are a bunch of programs available that can turn a log file into a graphical visualization for easier interpretation.

Log Analyzer - Free download at Downloads.com

If you do not feel like downloading a program to make pretty visual graphs, you can still view the log files manually with a text editor such as notepad or Microsoft word. It is important to keep an eye on your referrer logs specifically for the use of keywords that users are searching for and finding your site with.

Some of the newer browsers can have settings that block private data from being sent to the log files, but for the most part you can still get a good cross sampling of your user base by looking through your log files. While its not an exact science it is a good metric to use for visitor trending and a great way to further optimize your pages.