- From: Smylers <Smylers@stripey.com>
- Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 19:43:44 +0100
- To: HTML WG <public-html@w3.org>
Jon Barnett writes: > Let's say that the only way to track click-throughs is the @ping > attribute, then someone introduces a new method of using server-side > scripting and redirects to track click-throughs. These redirects are > foolproof and can't be circumvented by the end-user. The redirects > are nearly invisible to the end user, and tracking is much more > accurate. Most people who care about tracking would choose the > latter. > > Yes, the destination URL is obscured, but URLs are not particularly > useful to most end users. They have the use that a link to an already-visited URL can be rendered differently, and thus influence a user's decision as to whether to follow it. I know of a well-known news website which briefly implemented server redirection to monitor the effectiveness of various links on the site. This was soon abandoned because it messed up readers' ability to distinguish visited and unvisited links. So there is at least one major website use-case for the ping attribute over the existing methods. Smylers
Received on Saturday, 14 July 2007 15:32:44 UTC