What's a good CTR?

[happypeekers]

On google adwords my ctr is from 1.98 to 2.24 for my different ads :-)

[virgohippy]

For freesites, I'm seeing about 15-25% CTR of uniques from the whole freesite (all pages) to the desired sponsor. I haven't been keeping track of anything else lately.

[Mr Spock]

Originally Posted by virgohippy

For freesites, I'm seeing about 15-25% CTR of uniques from the whole freesite (all pages) to the desired sponsor. I haven't been keeping track of anything else lately.

How do you measure your CTR on a freesite?

[virgohippy]

Originally Posted by Mr Spock

How do you measure your CTR on a freesite?

Briefly:

1) Apache (access logs)
2) PHP header redirect
3) Python + RegEx = efficient access log parser

I wrote my own stats script.

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by virgohippy

1) Apache (access logs)
2) PHP header redirect
3) Python + RegEx = efficient access log parser

Hmm, (1) is a lot of work, and a hell of a lot of link lists don't allow CGI, which kills (2) and (3). Plus redirects are a big no-no for most of them.

[virgohippy]

Originally Posted by ecchi

Hmm, (1) is a lot of work, and a hell of a lot of link lists don't allow CGI, which kills (2) and (3). Plus redirects are a big no-no for most of them.

Every paid hosting account on a Linux/Apache server I've ever worked with has access logs enabled, so that requires no work on my part. At most I've had to request that those access logs be copied to an accessible dir every 24 hours, which has never been a problem.

My freesites don't use cgi, they're static html files. Outgoing links to the sponsor point to a file with a single line of code:

<?php header("Location: URL"); ?>

A hit to this file creates an entry in my access log, a record of the outgoing click.

I've been using PHP header redirects for my outgoing links for a couple years I think, and no link list worth submitting to has declined me so far... I can't remember any declining for it, to be honest.

Parsing the access logs is the only difficult part, and even that is quite easy with Python. I wouldn't attempt it with PHP though.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the log parser is a stand alone script, in no way connected to the freesites except where I define what is a freesite.