[Sigia-l] search logs - relevance of penultimate referrers?

[Jonathan Baker-bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Eric Scheid
> Sent: 20 March 2006 11:07
> To: sigia l
> Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] search logs - relevance of penultimate 
> referrers?
> 
> On 20/3/06 8:26 PM, "Jonathan Baker-bates"
> <Jonathan.Baker-bates at framfab.com> wrote:
> 
> > Forgive me if I've not understood you correctly, but aren't 
> you just 
> > talking about the difference between an internal and an external 
> > referrer?
> 
> No, I'm referring to the page previous to the referrer of the 
> page where the search occurred (penultimate = second to last 
> in a series or sequence).
> 

Ok I suppose I was just pointing out the obvious fact that you can't
know what the penultimate referrer of an *external* reference is because
that's in somebody else's logs, not yours. And the other fact that all
analysis systems I've used give this information out of the box :-)

> An example ... many search logs I've seen report the search 
> terms submitted, the number of results, and the referrer for 
> the request (which is the page where the search request was 
> submitted). I'm suggesting tracking the page
> *prior* to that referrer, ie. the referrer's referrer.
> 

Indeed, with the exception of the external penultimate referrer, as I
noted above.

<snip>
> 
> What if you knew that they got to the apples.html page via a 
> search for "recipes apples pears"? The search doesn't have to 
> be from google, it could be from the internal search. From 
> browsing the search log this example might be obvious, but 
> what if the preceding search wasn't "recipes apples pears"
> but was instead "recipes pies"?

OK I take back my earlier assertion that I would not regard this is as
very interesting. 

Jonathan