Hi there,
I wonder if anyone can shed some light on what I am seeing in the referrers module.
We launched our first EE site a little over 2 weeks ago. Since then I’ve been keeping a close eye on the referrers module to try and track where some of our hits are coming from. We’re doing good for a site that is less than 3 weeks old, in many cases doing better than our competition that has been established for 10 years on search terms we didnt even think of. It’s really a lot of fun watching hits come in from forums and comment sites and search engines.
We can track almost all of these referrals to a google search term, or a signature link in a forum post, or a blatant piece of promotion in our competitors forums (i know, bad 😊). Its not just google, we can track it with Yahoo, altavista, lycos, we even caught a dmoz editor checking in which is rare.
The only anomaly is search.live.com which I assume is Microsofts search unit. I get lots of these, probably accounts for 40% of the entire referrer log (I limit to 500) and almost none of the search terms actually have anything to do with the subject of my website!
This doesnt worry me, I would just like to know what is happening. Why are these terms so random? Do they obfuscate search terms? Is it the AVG8 effect? I’m really at a loss to explain it.
Hope one of you guys can shed some light on what this is all about.
FB.