SeoTracker

Intro

Where there are many free log analyzers for webserver such as Webalizer or Awstats and even more commercial analyzers with an array of functions and fanciness you would not need an other tracker. Right? Wrong. At least if you are a webmaster with more than one site that you need to monitor real time.

Why Seotracker

Even after a few weeks in the affiliate business, I had to realise the regular analyzers did not give me some very basic functions I really needed to keep track of my traffic. They were unable to show multiple sites at the same time, and they were unable to show me data for selectable ranges. Even worse was the lack of ability to check cross site traffic, and to track PPC campaigns and ther resulting outgoing clicks. So I came up with something I called seotracker, that I would call a dirty hack as opposed to sophisticated code.

Features and usage

Seo tracker is a PHP program, that can be invoked from within your webpages in a fairly simple way. It gives you the following basic functions:

  • Tracking multiple sites
  • Reporting over http (runs in a web server)
  • No need for weblog file access (raw logs)
  • Selectable timeframe reporting (eg last 10 minutes)
  • Keyword reporting
  • Click count from Major search engines (Yahoo,Google,MSN)
  • Detailed or plain display of data (eg numbers vs. every click)

    • Lack of features

    Seotracker does not draw you nice graphs walks your dog or plays mp3. This is a webmaster tool that displays important info on incoming traffic, outgoing traffic with keyword, referers, targets and product. If you have access to the shopping cart (or signup form) you can easily implement conversion tracking as well.

    Client

    The client can be virtually any script that can invoke a remote url, or just a static page that has an image link (1x1px) to the server script. Please see the section below to see what variables you can use if you use an alternate client. The incluses php client can be included in a very simple way in your php programs: include "seotrack_client.php".

    Server

    The server dumps all data into a database that comes from the client. Understands the following GET variables:

  • servername
  • referer
  • browser
  • remoteaddr
  • tracker (eg track campaigns, or ppc)
  • visits (if you cookie your visitors and count their visits)
  • store (in case it is an outgoing click)
  • product (in case it is an outgoing click from a product page)

    • An actual get url could look like this: ?servername=affiliatesite.com &referer=http://www.google.co.cr/search?q=buy foo&browser=Mozilla%2F4.0+%28compatible%3B+MSIE+6.0%3B+Windows+NT+5.2%3B+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322%29 &remoteaddr=148.244.150.52 &tracker=googleads &visits=3 &page=foobar.com &store=Buyfoo.com& &product=
    important note: "urlencode" all variables if you use a custom client. Slashes and other characters (such as "& and=") can couse quite an array of problems with GET requests.

    Reporting

    Reporting is really simple. You can select a time period with or without details. No more at this time.

    Upcoming Features

    I am not a big company that likes to promise big things to sell you something than forget about it. At the moment I would like to add a "small screen version" to the reporting screen that would refresh every 5 minutes, so I can display stats on my PDA without needing to interrupt my work on my other monitors.

    Feature request or idea

    I listen to ideas so if you have one let me know. I might do it for fun if I have time.
    If you need a feature to be implemented or need an installation I can try to help. If you need programming work or installation service please contact me for a quote.

    Disclaimer

    I am an IT engineer and being so I am not in any way proud of that code (no comments, chaotic variable names, you name it ...)
    However it works for me and when I saw that my friends really liked my custom tracking piece I though I had to share it. The code does not contain any backdoors or intentional errors, however use it on your own risk if your server gets hacked or your house burns down the next day after installation, I take no responsibility.

    Security

    Seo tracker used to use a remote php include in the past. That was bad, since you only had to hack the server to run a remote insertion attack on all the machines that linked to it. This is now changed, as the server is accessed as a remote file open: the client opens it as a remote text file and looks for an "OK". In addition to that I also added an image tracker functionality for static sites without much of a scripting capability.
    Why not XML/SOAP/YOU name it? Well I am lazy and my servers are lazy too. They are happy to request a remote image or send a simple GET requests and even ignore the reply in favour of speed. Feel free to write a nice SOAP or RPC client/server for it and I publish it here.

    Download

    Coming soon. have to cleanup some code first ... sorry..