How to Determine Where Your Visitors Come From Except Referer

Question

I just stumble this adwords click:

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=XXX&sig=XXX&ved=XXX&adurl=http://example.com

It is supposed to redirect to example.com.

However, If you click on that link, it will redirect you to another site which is not http://example.com.

I think there is something fishy on that example.com.

That site can tell where its visitors come from and display different content for different visitors.

I thought it was the Referer, then I disable the referer in my browser but that site still works.

Anyone know why how to Determine Where Your Visitors Come From Except Referer?

Answer 1

Keep in mind that those clicks "bounce" (ie. redirect) through Google before heading to example.com.

Depending on the circumstance, Google can add additional query string values to the landing page URL during the redirect. Meaning that clickthroughs won't actually land on "http://example.com", but instead something like "http://example.com?gclid=1234567".

In particular, the gclid value is appended to the landing page URL as a way for Google to pass data between Google AdWords and Google Analytics.

So example.com could be looking for a gclid value in order to identify traffic arriving from AdWords. This is independent of the referrer.

Answer 2

The Referrer is the only thing that will do this, unless by "That site can tell where its visitors come from" you are talking about Geo-location....

Note: Referrers are not the most reliable thing in the world. They can be spoofed