As most hubbers know, the Traffic Referral program is one of the many benefits of writing on HubPages. Like many new hubbers though, I was uncertain how to best take advantage of the program, and how to best use URL Trackers, in particular.

In hindsight, the HubPages Help on traffic referral should have been enough information, but I didn't really grasp their usefulness until I read some of the hubs on trackers that I found by searching the forums.

Most of the examples explain trackers from the perspective of why you are referring someone, or what you are referring someone to. For example, "sign-ups" or a link to a "recommended" article. The examples themselves helped me to better understand trackers, but these uses of trackers didn't suit my needs.

I would prefer to know the source of the traffic, not where it is going to, or why. I post updates on Facebook, Twitter, and other social network and bookmarking sites. I have other blogs that I publish on. I want to know if anyone follows the link from one of these sites. This way, I'll have a better idea as to which of these sites are best from a marketing perspective.

Using trackers in this way provides a nice summary of the source of your traffic at a glance. Some of the trackers I use are:

• _swTwitter
• _swFacebook
• _swHubPages
• _swWordPress
• _swMobileMe
• _swEmail
• _swDigg

For a more detailed analysis of your traffic, I suggest looking into Google Analytics.

On your My Account page there is a list of Traffic Sources from where your visitors came from, but this does not seem to correlate with the URL Tracker counts.

When I publish a hub and I "tweet" the news to shafronsworld followers on Twitter, I include the _swTwitter tracker in the link to the hub. Similarly, I'll put a link in an email or on my other blogs that includes the tracker for that site.

I use the _swHubPages tracker in the links I place in my articles. I never use the default tracker, so when I look at the tracker statistics I know whether someone followed one of my links or followed one of the links generated by HubPages.

If a reader uses Share It! to obtain a link and that reader is not signed-in, the link has no tracker in it (not even the author's default one). So, I put a link with my _swHubPages tracker and invite them to use that one instead. See an example of this in the link to this article in the Copyright section below.

I don't see point of providing a link that doesn't have my (or another hubber's) tracker in it. It would be nice feature for HubPages to generate if a link with the default tracker of the hub author if the reader is not signed-in.

The Graph image is from Clker.com. It is a public domain, royalty free image. [http://www.clker.com/clipart-16937.html]

The Pie Chart cartoon is from the Hernando County Florida, Supervisor of Elections home page. [http://www.hernandovotes.com/images/charts.gif]

Copyright © 2009 Shafron's World. All rights reserved.

Articles by Shafron's World on HubPages are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. You may freely use, share, or adapt these articles as long as you include links to the source articles in your work.

If you are already a member of the HubPages community, sign-in and Share It! to obtain a link with your own URL tracker. Non-members, copy the link below before you Share It! Use this link in place of the standard one that is generated.

Link to This Article...

http://hubpages.com/_swHubPages/hub/Using-URL-Trackers