PHP referrer URL script to know how the visitor came to the page

Referrer is the URL from where the visitor has arrived to the page. If you have reached here by clicking a link from google.com then google URL is the referrer for you in this page. We can find out the referrer by using PHP. This is useful for the webmasters to know where from the traffic to the site is coming. Which advertisement campaign is successful and which is not. We will also know the keywords used by the visitors in different search engines to arrive at the site. Here is the simple code to know the referrer in PHP

$ref=@$_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER];

echo "Referrer of this page  = $ref ";

There is no referrer information available for this visit

Return to this page by visiting other pages under the heading Related tutorial, then you can see your referrer URL.

@ is used to suppress any error message is generated. You can remove it and check.

Breaking the referrer URL

Here is an example of referrer URL we can get from HTTP header. This one is from Google.

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8

&ved=0CD4QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plus2net.com%2Fphp_tutorial%2Fphp_ip.php

&ei=GC6tVL_ECYObuQSOp4KIBA&usg=AFQjCNFqBr-A1sG3F2UoqzmqnGUYVTvb9Q&bvm=bv.83134100,d.c2E

We are interested to know how many visitors are arriving from Google or from any other search engines. So we will find out the host part from this URL by using parase_url() function. This function returns us an array of elements. Here is the code to display the array.

<?Php
$url="https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&

source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&

ved=0CD4QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plus2net.com%2Fphp_tutorial%2Fphp_ip.php&

ei=GC6tVL_ECYObuQSOp4KIBA&

usg=AFQjCNFqBr-A1sG3F2UoqzmqnGUYVTvb9Q&bvm=bv.83134100,d.c2E";
$details=parse_url($url);
//echo $details[host];
while (list ($key, $val) = each ($details)) { 
echo "$key -> $val <br>"; 
}

?>

Output is here

scheme -> http 
host -> www.google.co.in 
path -> /url 
query -> sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&

cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CD4QFjAF&

url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plus2net.com%2Fphp_tutorial%2Fphp_ip.php&

ei=GC6tVL_ECYObuQSOp4KIBA&usg=AFQjCNFqBr-A1sG3F2UoqzmqnGUYVTvb9Q&

bvm=bv.83134100,d.c2E

We are interested in only the domain part of this so we can get the name of the site sending us the visitors like this.

echo $details[host];

We can store only this information in a table and find out the domains which are sending us the traffic.

You can create one application where we will store only the domain part of the referral site and prepare a report saying which site has send how many visitors to a page or site.

Storing referrer along with other data.

We can collect and store visitors IP address, referrer, browser details, time of visit etc in MySQL database table or in a CSV file

Google has recently changed to secured search where search words are encrypted so they are no longer passed to user sites. Before that it was easy to find out search keywords using referrer string.

Getting search query from referrer address.

If the search is not encrypted then we can get the search query from the referrer query string. For this we will use one Bing search as an example. First we will break the referred url by using parse_url function and take out the query string part. From the query string we will take out the text query part by using parse_str function.

$url="https://www.bing.com/search?q=php%20get%20ip%20and%20network&form=MB1078&mkt=es-ES&setlang=es-ES";

$details=parse_url($url); 

$query_string=$details[query];

$query=parse_str($query_string,$output);

echo $output[q];

The output is here

php get ip and network

Same way you can find out the ip address of visitors to your site by using PHP. Click here to know the IP address by using PHP.

Getting referrer URL in ASP

Some of the browsers setting can be changed to stop the browser from sending any referrer information. Read here to know how you can change the settings for FireFox browser for referrer.

PHP referrer URL of a page

Breaking the referrer URL

Storing referrer along with other data.

Getting search query from referrer address.