How to track outbound clicks

Heywood

can anyone help at least give me a general idea of how this works? I am writing a banner program. I have it going where it randomly throws up a banner, with a hyperlink. I want to add some tracking.

I have a general idea how to track impressions, that seems pretty easy, but how do you track clicks? My only guess would be a seperate program, like the link would be

http://www.yoursite.com/track.php?www.thiersite.com

and track would increment the hits. I dont know, is this the best way?

mikeatrpi

As far as I know, it is the only way. Instead of www.theirsite.com you could use an encoded string or ID # and then match that to your database to give the real URL for the redirect.

bealers

Originally posted by Heywood
I have a general idea how to track impressions, that seems pretty easy, but how do you track clicks? My only guess would be a seperate program, like the link would be

create click.php
click.php takes one input, a url (or an id of a url)

in click.php

<?php
if ($_GET['url'])
{
    // validate url
    // track click
    //redirect
    Header("Location: " . $_GET['url']);
}
else
{
    //this page is not designed to work on it's own
    // or something
}
?>