mywebsite.com?id=number 1 - how to get this, and how to view statistics?

[jamesmd]

i really don't know how to put into words what I want to do...

Basically, I want to have something like mywebsite.com?id=1 , where 1 can be any number or word that i can assign to a user... then, someone can put their link on a website, then on a backend, i want to be able to see how many visitors have been sent to mysite through the tracking link ......

any free way to do this?

thanks!

[Ali-v-8]

its called tracking software

[debbidoo]

Install Google Analytics and use the following URL Builder tool:

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

Good luck :)

[jamesmd]

excellent! thanks for that.

[debbidoo]

No worries :) I've used it before, it was quite interesting. Sent links to a dozen friends, each one with a unique URL generated by that tool, asking them to forward the email to their other friends... was interesting to see which friend had the most clicky mates! :D

The results come up in the 'campaigns' area of your Analytics visitor sources, so remember to keep an eye on the reports there :)

[CaterTrade]

Careful of canonical urls though as pages with different tracker ids but with duplicate content on may be detrimental.

[jamesmd]

How do these affect Google seo? Do they not count as backlinks for the front page, will they get listed with the campaign tags on maybe?

[debbidoo]

I think your best bet would be to post the question in the SEO forum, and get one of our resident SEO experts to answer :)