Pixel Tracking. Who uses it?

[pound]

I'm sure a lot of yous here parasite host to take advantage of nice old websites with all their goodness. Parasite hosting is my favourite way to test out new niches because I know I can rank quickly (even if its just a temporary rank) and get some data.

My problem at the moment is tracking. On most of my parasite hosting pages I have the user click a link which takes them to tracking.com/keyword.php which then redirects them to a sponsor. This way I can track the amount of traffic going to the sponser.

BUT I can't track how many people are landing on the parasite page (most dont let me use javascript) so Im thinking image pixel tracking is the best idea.

Are there any off-the-shelf pixel tracking scripts out there?

PS - Not looking to use pixel tracking to track conversions, just track traffic!

[DutchTeenCash]

ok let me get this right - youre looking for heatmaps? if so there are plenty they do use js though

[kmanrox]

bump for i have no idea what parasite hosting is

[TheFilthyFrog]

Hi Mate,
Is this what your talking about?? - http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html

[SayWhut]

^^Uses Javascript


Probably get the most accurate way with this:-

Hiding links with PHP and counting clicks with MYSQL

[FuqALot]

parasite spamming is so 2006 and doesn't work well anymore,

anyway what you need to do is look into xss and insert javascript and other tricks, to redirect the parasite page to your converting landing page (where u have some counter). there is always a way to insert a redirect. about 80% of visitors will be successfully redirected if done right, but that is more visitors than you will get from the link on the page.

[hjnet]

WTF is parasite hosting? I feel like a noob now

[Eman - PG]

In adult we use campaigns.

[pound]

haha I got advice on everything except what i asked - I can't use JS on these pages, I dont want heatmaps, yes parasite hosting still works (but thanks for telling everyone it doesn't) and im not interested in XSS exploits.

Of course if anyone can answer my question, Im all ears

[GrouchyAdmin]

It's simple to roll your own. I've not bothered to look for an existing product to do so.

Just use GD, or passthrough a 1x1 transparent gif, and use mod_rewrite to call the script. Quite a few things look for the '1x1 pixel gif' these days, though, so you may consider hiding it in an undisplayed div, or CSS.

[rowan]

Isn't parasite hosting taking advantage of user submitted content on a trusted domain? eg a comment on a .edu blog

[psili]

I'm like the others... I have no idea what parasite hosting is.
What's the basic thing you're trying to do - track someone who lands on a page without using javascript and aren't hosting the page yourself so have no means of using your own server side code?

If so, can't you have:

<img src="htttp://myownserver.com/tracker.jpg"/>

and use mod_rewrite to convert the request for tracker.jpg to a php script which basically does (pretty much pseudo code below -- do not use)

<?php
 ob_start(); var_dump($_SERVER); $to_dump = ob_get_contents(); ob_end_clean();
 if($fp = fopen("track.txt","wb"))
 {
    fwrite($to_dump,$fp);
    fclose($fp);
 }
  echo file_get_contents("path/to/some/image.jpg");
?>

??

[AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE]

I Invented Pixel tracking.

Seriously I did.

[Useless Warrior]

Parasite hosting - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/parasite-...g-spam-results