Block Analytics from reading my URL

[Nipper234]

Hi there,

I have a website with links to other websites. The websites that i have links to have google analytics and when they log into their accounts they can see a link is coming from my website. how do i block google so it cant track that the links are coming from me?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[B-Double-U]

It sounds like you are trying to inflate your Page Rank by self producing inbound links from your own properties. Unfortunately, if goog can follow the link from one site to another, then they "know" where they are coming from. They also look at the server, network, I.P. address and a host of other things to prevent people from doing this.

If this is your intent, you might want to rethink your strategy.

[AussieWebmaster]

if the link is to pass anything then it has to be seen.... you can have the link no follow but then it is not passing anything except the actual traffic that clicks it... and they will see it in analytics

it is the source of traffic and all analytics track that

[JohnW]

To really hide this as well as possible you would need to both hide the link on your site, and, make the link bounce off of some intermediate site that you could create. The right kind of redirection would pass the referrer of the intermediate site instead of yours.

[WInk]

Google's tags, I believe, can read most of the information that a server log file can read. (Makes sense with an urchin core, right?)

So, in sum, unless you know how to spoof server access logs, on somebody else's server, you can't.

That's as far as I can see right now.

[beu]

If specific URLs aren't an issue, I'd pick a URL at the other site which immediately redirects via 301 or 302 and link to it. Similar to JohnW's "bounce" but no referrer.

[JohnW]

As far as I know the referrer from the original page will be passed via a 301/302. The way to do it is with a good old fashioned sneaky redirect on the intermediate page.

[beu]

As far as I know the referrer from the original page will be passed via a 301/302.
In most cases the redirected referrer will be captured by the browser but redirects don't contain analytics code.

[JohnW]

I'd say test it. I'm pretty sure Analytics on the final destination site will pick up the originating referrer, because thats what the get header will contain, even if there is a 301/302 redirect along the way. Thats why I said a middle site with a sneaky redirect would be needed to launder it, to replace the referrer in the header.

[beu]

I'd say test it. I'm pretty sure Analytics on the final destination site will pick up the originating referrer, because thats what the get header will contain, even if there is a 301/302 redirect along the way.
I agree, it does seem to reason! When Google Analytics pages 301 or 302 redirect, the redirect URL becomes the landing page's referrer. For that reason "no referral" is recorded if it's the same domain.

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55477&topic=11017

[JohnW]

Good find, this article.

>Additionally, some browsers may actually redirect before the JavaScript call from the code can be made

What I don't get is the "some browsers" part. With a 301/302 (server level redirect) ALL browsers would redirect before ever reading the analytics code because they would never even be able to see the redirecting page (or the analytics code there). Guess they are talking about some other kind of redirect?

[beu]

Thanks man, and you bring up a really good point too!

Guess they are talking about some other kind of redirect?

Another particular about Google Analytics is, in order for a pageview to "happen" JavaScript must be executed and a 200 must be returned.

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55536&topic=10990