Missing $HTTP_REFERER

[Anon]

Has anyone ever had a problem with empty $HTTP_REFERER vars?

I've written a web tracker that tracks (among other things) the referer. The problem is, in well over 50-75% of the cases, the $HTTP_REFERER variable is plain empty. Other times, it actually works!

This is one of those websites that should recieve almost all of it's traffic through search engines.

Any ideas?

(This has been going on a while. I believe I've even tried to grab that value with javascript to no avail. Is it possible there's an httpd config error at work here?)

[djg_uk]

Hi Mark,

$HTTP_REFERRER is not set by all browsers. Also, if the link is followed by typing directly into the address box, a link from an e-mail message or a link in file format (.url, for example), then $HTTP_REFERRER will be empty.

Check the comments on the predefined variables section of the PHP documentation:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php

Regards,

David