[Sigia-l] C+S: search logging dilemma

[Eric Scheid]

On 19/11/04 12:02 PM, "Billie Mandel" <Billie.Mandel at tpl.org> wrote:

> - Any advice about some piece of data you find yourself wishing your
> site were logging when it comes to reporting/analysis time.

I log the usual web log stats (date, time, ip, browser, referer), and I also
log the number of hits found for their search term, and also the referring
page's referrer.

The latter requires a bit of dynamic coding - either backend, or in the
browser with javascript.

The method is for the page from which they do the search (which of course
contains the search form) to include a hidden field with the referring page
URL.

The point to doing this is to gather more intelligence, and is particularly
important if you don't have a search form on every page. If you have just
the one search form page, then when a search request is submitted the
'referer' is of course going to be that search form page. Not real helpful.

However, if you have the penultimate referrer, then you have something more
interesting. Say they are on a page with cat pictures, and then click the
link to the search page, and then submit a search request for "companion
animals". Useful.

For the situation where you have a search form on every page, then the
search request referrer would be the page with cat pictures, and the
penultimate referrer might be <http://google.com/search?q=egypt>, which is
also interesting.

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Session IDs are useful too, if you have those.

e.