Referers are the new black (gold)
A tiny bit of data, when regarded solely, can seem totally unimportant. In most webserver logfiles the referer-bit of log information is not kept. It seems a good strategy to avoid these extra 40 byte of data for every logfile line, every click and every pageview - especially when that data is regarded useless and without any information.
But remember the data warehouse effect: tiny bits of data quickly add up to a big picture. The more the better.
The referer is such a tiny bit of data. It doesn't tell more except where some anonymous web surfer came from, when he visited your page, viewed that image, watched that video.
But that's an awful lot of information.
Mining referer data is one of the most important informational bits for behavioural web analysis. The most important thing, though, is getting these huge amounts.
There are naturals, of course, like big traffic websites, that even offer linking directly to hosted content like youtube or flickr. For every video watched, the publisher of that video or picture (the one who uploaded it) doesn't even get that referer anymore. He won't know, who links to it and which links generates how many views or when they come.
In social media marketing strategies this information is extremely important to identify fans, followers or unknown affiliates.
Then there is google, with its free service google analytics. In exchange for offering some tools for analysing your web traffic, google gets all information concerning your visitors behaviour. Combined with an ubiquitous google cookie, these data chunks are not even anonymous anymore - they got a face.
Mining referer information is the link equivalent of FoF information.
... read more stories on the topic information overload
An important consideration is to think about where the data of google analytics are stored. For this reason it is a good alternative to use the open source web analytics software Piwik. It has nearly the same functions and is customizable (e.g. the user interface). But the most important thing is, that information are stored in your own database. Maybe you have a look at.
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Not meaning to jump on the google analytics bashing bandwaggon, but you're making an important point. Asking where the data is stored is paramount, especially when personal tracking information is involved. It may be against local laws to store this data outside one's country or have it processed by an entity bound to lesser legal considerations.
I'll definitely have a look into Piwik though, thanks for the pointer.
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