When I blog an article from a newspaper, such as the Star Tribune piece below, the url looks like this -
h--p://www.startribune.com/local/52441552.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUycaEacyU
All that's needed to create a valid link is the part up to and including "html." The rest is... what? Some type of tracking code?
When I try looking up "elr" on the 'net, everything I see is irrelevant (Everyone Loves Raymond, East Lancashire Railway, Endangered Language Repository, Esther Lavonne and the Rottens, Elevated Leg Rests...)
This is not important. But I'd be curious to know the answer.
Update: Per "davelog's" comment, the letters stand for "external link referral." Testing it in that regard, I went back to the paper and opened the same article via two different links at the newspaper (frontpage and "most emailed") and got two different elr suffixes, differing in the last dozen or so characters.
There's nothing interesting about "elr" - it's just a variable. What you're seeing is exactly like something in the form:
ReplyDelete.../foo.html?ref=123456
Instead of "ref", the website is naming the variable "elr". Same thing though.
Now, the question is, why is it there, if leaving off that part still gets you to the article? It's looks like it's doing some sort of tracking. If you notice, you'll get different elr code's depending on how you accessed the webpage (homepage, sidebar, etc).
It could be anything (just a variable) and it probably tells the linked website some tidbit about how you are coming to the page.
ReplyDeleteOne example that people see all the time is youtube links. For example in your Shona Holmes video below the URL you get is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWxcv0Dummk&feature=player_embedded
the variables are after the "?" v= tells youtube what video you want and that is the only variable you actually need the feature= variable lets them know that the link was from an embedded player on a website. Youtube doesn't but they also could easily add another variable saying which website the link was from.
It's probably for tracking. I worked for a company that did the web advertisement placements for their clients. The company had their own tracking software that measured where the traffic to the pages was directed from, so they could most efficiently place the ads. Such as what someone is likely to do if they get to the site through google versus what they would do if they reach it through a link in an ad email. Basically an attempt to get the most bang for the buck since the clients were paying fees based on clicks.
ReplyDeleteExternal Link Referral.
ReplyDelete