Can I get Stats on a forwarded domain?

Hi Rich

Firstly if you make the link /SpecialOffer225 then people will certainly use it. And "225" shows you the specific traffic source. But don't go with consecutive numbers coz people wil try 224 and 226 etc too out of curiousity.

Of course you must have a special offer on that page. NAd that's not a bad thing to publicise in yor offline makreting ... increases traffic.

Naturally people will also visit the home page without the /SpecialOffer225 just to see what's there. That will increase the hits to your home page and increases "time on the site" stats and helps with rankings as google detects those visits too.

As for forwarding ... if you forward at your domain registrar then it is unlikely that you get any stats at all.

If you forward at your webhost, you can get just hits from the logs using such things as Webalizer or AWStats available form most Cpanels/webhosts free of chrarge (but must be activated). But test to see if indeed they register the hit ... it is possible that the host forwards before they register the hit.

You can download and install those software if not available from your Cpanel. Again most servers will work with them. All they need is access to the server logs athta can be switched to text files.

A better way of forwarding is to put a html redirect on the index page of the test site itself as well as google anayltics. Then using GA, you will easily see all the goo stuff about the traffic.

But my preference is for the /SpecialOffer225 type of link. In this way you're continuing to brand your site. You do not risk confusing the visitor who goes to one site and ends up on another (HIGE drawback of your test site) etc.

And when your offer is no longer avilable ... a polite message tells the prospect that offer ended on {date} but they may be interested in {another offer}. Ot you can redirect the offer page to anywhere else you wish and therefore make use of the traffic.

In SEO terms you get more benefits from using just the one site than you would with 2.

Finally if you use a test domain you can still only use the domain itself for just one add. As soon as you want to vary your ad and test and track that second offline ad, you;re back to the same question .... a new domain or a subpage!

Good luck
Smai