Why do some links have a ?(then some text)

Discussion in 'Traffic Analysis' started by CaliforniaPI, Feb 10, 2008.

  1. #1
    Hey I was wondering about why some links have a ? at the end after the .com and then some weird text like, www.google.com?somelinklovefromchow

    What does this do? Is this for tracking traffic? How would one best use this?

    I have arcadebuilder on my arcade and when I want to do a link exchange there is a "referral link" for tracking I suppose, but I can't figure out how to track the results. Any ideas? Thanks.
     
    CaliforniaPI, Feb 10, 2008 IP
  2. Jul

    Jul Peon

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    #2
    Do you have an example to provide?
     
    Jul, Feb 12, 2008 IP
  3. Faint

    Faint Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Faint, Feb 12, 2008 IP
  4. therod

    therod Member

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    #4
    The (?) at the end of a url indicates that the data is being passed from one web page to another webpage using the querystring method. Anything after the ? in webpage1 is passed to webpage2 as a parameter. So, for example, if webpage1 wants to pass a customer_id to webpage2, it might look like

    http://www.someurl.com?custid=123

    where custid denotes customer id and 123 is the actual record number of the customer.

    Webpage2 can then use the 123 to find that customer in a database. There are many ways to use querystrings but this is a good general example.
     
    therod, Feb 13, 2008 IP
    toniya likes this.
  5. CaliforniaPI

    CaliforniaPI Peon

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    #5
    Thanks for explanation.
     
    CaliforniaPI, Feb 13, 2008 IP