How do shortcuts work in Convio

rorris

Does anyone know how Convio shortcuts are set up behind the scenes? I'd assume that they are set up as 301 redirects in an .htaccess file?

The reason I ask is that I've just noticed that in Google Analytics the number of referrers to our ecommerce site from our Google adwords is way too low. So I'm wondering if perhaps the shortcuts that we set up (e.g. wildlifeadoption.defenders.org/penguin) are somehow "losing" the google adwords referers. Anybody else looked into this?

Thanks,

Rebecca

Michael

I'm not so sure about it being a 301.  Most default uses of the HTTP Moved header in programming languages use 302 instead and you have to code 301 redirects manually.  In my experience vendors don't do it, and only experienced programmers with a fairly good understanding of how those different codes relate to SEO even know they should.

So, that said:  HTTP/1.1 302 Found  is the http response message... in Convio's case, their short URL tool doesn't use 301, which may be an issue

Noah Cooper

Convio's URL Shortcuts use 302 redirects, but the Referer should be maintained. To test, you can render the Referer in an HTML comment on the final URL like so:

<!--Referer = ]-->

Brian Mucha

Its a bummer that they don't pass along any querystring values to the target URL. This would come in very handy with Google Analytics campaigns.

http://www.mysite.org/givenow?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=2009_11

...should translate into...

https://secure3.convio.net/cmf/site/Donation2?idb=XXXXXXXX&df_id=XXXX&XXXX.donation=form1&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=2009_11