Re: Are They Lying: $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] Question
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Re: Are They Lying: $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] Question

From: Dave <dave@REMOVEbundook.com>
Date: Mon Jun 13 2005 - 16:33:38 CEST

Good Man (heyho@letsgo.com) decided we needed to hear...
<snip>
> 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.
>
> Is my method of tracking good/reliable enough to call them liars, or is my
> method not too dependable?

Not really a PHP question, but anyways no, HTTP_REFERRER is not that
reliable. It *should* be filled in, but e.g. some ISP caches (such as
AOLs) block it and some personal firewalls (Norton is one IIRC) also
block it - you can configure Norton to send it to certain sites but
its off by default.

-- 
Dave <dave@REMOVEbundook.com>
(Remove REMOVE for email address)
Received on Mon Oct 17 20:51:20 2005