Would you like to use one link to track multiple sources?

We’ve recently introduced a highly anticipated feature we’re calling Plus+ Tracking which allows you to add additional identifying information to your tracking links so you can use one tracking link to measure response from multiple sources.

With Plus+ Tracking, you can take an ordinary LinkTrack tracking link like:

http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking

and append anything you want on to the end like:

http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/awesome
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/super
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/really-cool
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/user_email@test.com
or http://linktrack.info/plus_tracking/another-email@test.com

When someone follows your Plus+ Tracking link not only will LinkTrack record the click, but we’ll also record the additional information you added on the end.

This means you can send custom tracking links to multiple sources and measure each individual response in one location!

Our users are already using this new feature to:

• Measure email response from specific email addresses,
• Track affiliate campaigns in more than one location,
• Monitor pay-per-click conversions from specific keywords,
• and more!

This feature is available now to our “Professional” level accounts.

One of the biggest uses for the LinkTrack service is affiliate link tracking. There are several reasons to use a link tracking service for affiliate links:

1. You can trust that your affiliate partner is accurately tracking all of your commissions and leads, but it’s nice to have your own independent data for comparison.  After all, if they don’t record a few of your commissions accurately who’s most likely to benefit?
2. While many affiliate programs have a utility to show you how much money you’ve earned and how many sales you’ve made, most don’t show you how much traffic you’ve been sending their way.  If you’re very successful at sending new leads to your affiliate partner but they’re not converting them into sales, you may want to look for another partnership.
3. If you ever do decide to switch affiliate partnerships, you don’t want to have to start over from scratch.  With an affiliate link tracking service like LinkTrack, you can simply edit your tracking links to point to your new affiliate.

At the request of some of our customers, we’ve recently added a feature to our site to give premium account holders the option to make their tracking pages publicly available.

Until now, any account holder creating a link was given access to a private tracking page where they could view their click tracking records in detail by logging into their account.  Until now, they did not have the option to share that page with friends, customers or anyone else who might be interested in the data.

If you’re a premium account holder, you’ll find this option on the create/edit links page.  You can turn on public access when you create a link, or leave it at the default setting for private links.  You can toggle public/private tracking pages on and off at anytime by editing an existing link.

This feature might be useful for bulk mail campaign managers, online advertising consultants, or for-hire social networkers that need a way to display the results of their efforts to a customer or third-party.

Here’s an example of a publicly available tracking page.

This question has probably been asked and answered elsewhere, but it came via email from one of our users earlier today:

Hi Linktrack.info,

I was browsing your site before and I’m a little confused about what you do. What is a URL tracking tool and how would I use it?

Of course, in my mind the answer is simple, but that’s because I work with URL tracking day in and day out as one of the programmers on the site. Like anything else when you work closely with something for a long time, you feel like every nuance is somehow common knowledge!

Thanks to this user for bringing me back down to earth. In a nutshell, here’s how a url tracking tool works (at least with this site):

1. 

   Create a tracking link which goes to your destination url

2. Distribute that tracking link in whatever way is convenient for you. Put it in emails, on other web sites, etc.
3. Every time someone follows that link, we record all the information available from that action and give it to you in a readable format.

That’s it. There are a a lot of different ways people use our tracking links – browse through some of our previous articles to see a few.

When we first sat down to design LinkTrack, it was going to be one more in a growing list of simple URL shortening sites that kept a database of redirect links and their destinations. We were going to simply access our database for incoming requests and use a 301 redirect in the header to forward the user to their final destination.

While we were kicking the idea around, we realized that since the visitors were passing through our site anyway, there was absolutely no reason not to record and make available all of the data typically collected by a web server during a site visit. Things like the date and time of the visit, their IP address, and their referrer (where they came from).

With that in mind, we built LinkTrack as a url shortener with tracking as an added benefit.

If you’re using a url shortening service that doesn’t include tracking, you’re really missing out on some of the best parts or url redirection. Try out our site for free when you get a chance – you don’t even have to create an account – and see what we mean.

Here’s a way to use the LinkTrack service with all of its tracking features with your own domain name at no extra cost!

So, you love LinkTrack, and you think it’s awesome that you can make links and track them whenever you want, right?

But what if you’re not a fan of the linktrack.info domain name and you don’t like sticking urls like http://linktrack.info/some_link all over the place?

You could go with a whitelabel, custom built, custom branded URL tracking service built under your own domain name, but that’s either going to cost a lot of time or money to setup.

Here’s how to do it on the cheap under your own domain name:

You’ll need a registered domain, hosted wherever you like and a server that uses url re-writing via an .htaccess file. With a little modification you can probably use your existing web site, but you’ll want to be a little careful with how you setup pattern matching in the .htaccess file.

Once you’ve got that going, use the following code to redirect incoming tracking links to the LinkTrack site:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule ^(.*+)/(.*+)$ http://linktrack.info/$1/$2 [R=301,NC,L]
  RewriteRule ^(.*+)$ http://linktrack.info/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
</IfModule>

Update 3/9/10: I made some changes to the .htaccess code above to accommodate premium account holders using vanity links containing special characters and links with Plus+ tracking enabled.

Then, it’s just a matter of creating a tracking link and appending the redirect hash to your own domain!

For example:

1. Go to LinkTrack.info and make a tracking link like http://linktrack.info/my_tracking_link
2. Take the ‘my_tracking_link’ part off the end and append it to your domain name so it looks like http://mydomain.com/my_tracking_link
3. If you’ve setup the .htaccess file correctly, users clicking on http://mydomain.com/my_tracking_link will be redirected seamlessly to the link’s final destination, and LinkTrack will record all of the tracking data in your account!

There it is! Custom branded url tracking at no extra cost. Your mileage may vary depending on your server setup, but if you’ve worked with .htaccess files before you can probably get this up and running without too much trouble.

It’s always fun when you find another cool use for your own service!

Today, I started using tracking images on my 404 pages to count how many page not found requests the site was getting.

These tracking images tell me which requests are getting 404/page not found responses and where they’re coming from without having to dig through my referrer logs!

This way, I know whether I’m serving too many 404 pages, and what I need to do to fix them.

Have a feature request? Add your suggestions below, or let us know if you like someone else’s idea. We’ll pick the most popular and get to work!

Got a nice quote from one of the users on our service today:

I really enjoy the linktrack program. I promote the best identity theft service in america and business opportunity that goes with it! I mostly post my linktrack on craigslist and its really nice knowing which city and which category works the best.

Thanks!
Jeff Baron
http://linktrack.info/gpg25ihz

Here’s another one:

I just found out that signing up is AWESOME! all links I create are now in one place and destination editing is GREAT!

–Raymond P.

If you need a 1px by 1px transparent tracking image that you can use for image tracking, you can use this one:

http://linktrack.info/images/tracking_image.gif