Understanding Referral Tracking

Referral Tracking Explanation

Referrals and Lead Tracking

Your association provides members with an exclusive opportunity to promote their business by advertising on the your website. Unlike print media where tracking real results is difficult, your website provides sophisticated software for members to track their advertisement performance to make SURE they are getting the results they expect. The tracking adheres to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards and guidelines (see http://www.iab.net).

The website tracks each time a member's business listing and advertisement is viewed (sometimes called an "impression"). It also tracks the number of times listings and advertisements are "clicked on". The number of "views" or "impressions" divided by the number of times the listing or advertisement is "clicked on" is called a "click-thru" rate.

Statistical tracking using different software and different vendors will be different for a variety of reasons. The Referral and Lead reports track ALL activity (other systems do not depending upon their purpose) and are usually higher than other statistical tracking software such as Google Analytics for a variety of reasons.

The most common reason for the differences is in the tracking of "non-human" impressions and click-thrus. These are commonly called robots (or 'bots') or spiders because they crawl through a website to index the content for searching. 'Bots' are non-human impressions and click-thrus created when search engines such as Google index your listing to be displayed in search results. While a 'bot' visit isn't necessarily a direct lead for your business, it DOES have value because it is indexing your listing and thus increasing the "likelihood" your business is found online. When a business is indexed, a potential customer may contact that business directly just from the information indexed and therefore may not even see your listing on your site (even though it was your site that provided the search engine with the information.)

There are many different methods to tracking internet advertising. Related Links* that discuss different report methods:

Google Analytics and Web Server Log Files

Web Analytics: JavaScript vs. Web Log

MC Trade Referral Report Details

You can view any member's referral report by opening their profile, then clicking the Referrals tab. Click the Referral Report button to see their individual report.

Click here to see a sample referral report. Below, you'll find a more detailed explanation for each of the different standard referral types. Note that you may also have custom referral types that you have added in your Admin section.

AC = Banner Ad Clicked
This is the number of times one of the profile's banner ads was clicked on.

AD = Banner Ad Displayed
This is the number of times all of the profile's banner ads were displayed somewhere on your site. This number will likely be much higher than many of the other referral types, particularly if you have the banner displayed on all pages throughout the site, and if you have rotating banner ads (each time the banner rotates on a page, a separate "display" is counted.

BR= Business Connect Detail Viewed
This is the number of times the member logged in to Members Only to view a specific Business Connect request detail page.

BV = Business Connect Listing Viewed
This is the number of times the member logged in to Members Only to view the full list of all Business Connect requests.

CD = Coupon Details Displayed
This is the number of times a specific coupon belonging to the member was opened and viewed.

CV = Coupon List Viewed
This is the number of times the full list of all coupons (including one of the member's) was displayed.

D = Business Listing Displayed
This is the number of times the member's listing was displayed as a part of a list, including views on all listings in a certain category or a list of search results including the member's listing.

LD = Individual Listing Displayed
This is the number of the times the member's specific business listing detail page was displayed, either as the result of a direct search or from clicking through to the member listing from a results or category page.

E = Email Sent From Website
This is the number of times a visitor to the website used the contact form to send an email to the member in their business listing.

F = Front Desk Referral
This is the number of times your staff recorded a referral for this member using the Front Desk Referral system.

M = Map Displayed
This is the number of times the member's address was displayed on your dyanamic Google maps on the directory. This number may be very high in areas of high concentration, and are a result of the map indexing that Google does when dynamically mapping your members.

ML = Members Only Login
This is the number of times your member logged in to your Members Only portal.

SC = Sponsor Image Clicked
This is the number of times the member's sponsor image that was displayed as part of an event web page was clicked on.

SD = Sponsor Image Displayed
This is the number of times the member's sponsor image was displayed as part of an event web page.

SM = Sponsor Message Displayed
This is the number of times the member's sponsor message was displayed as part of an event web page.

W = Website Clicked On
This is the number of times the member's website URL was clicked on from your business directory listings.

*NOTE:  These are external sources and there is no promise to the accuracy of the messaging of this site and is not endorsed by MemberClicks.