The script that I'm talking about would be used in place of the image file. The script would return the appropriate image to the web browser but also would log the referrer string and IP address.
Could be useful if you were really that interested to know. What would your script do exactly? You should make it log the search terms and date in a database or something so you could view the exact stats at a glance. You could then look at the days where you earned more and get a rough idea. I suppose it would be almost perfect to test and determine what are high paying keywords and what aren't. Especially if the search was not used by anyone other than yourself.
So, from the referrer string we could break out the search phrase? I'd love to be able to see what they are searching for. BUT, would it be fully compatible with the TOS?
I have a working prototype at... http://www.googl2.com You can view the log at... http://www.googl2.com/images/test.txt Currently, the only content that is saved is the Date, Time, Referrer string and IP address. The problem though is that if the user caches the image, this log file doesn't get updated.
Yep - I saw the same thing too - don't think there is a good way around this unless you can do something tricky with the img that causes the browser to think it has to reload it every time.
It probably isn't allowed, but if you were using PHP you could change the image reference from the calling app to be... <img src="img.php?x=<?php echo random_number_function(); ?>"> PHP: This way the browser thinks it's a different image each time.