Simple & Legitimate way to Cloak a URL? - wordpress

I am not a professional with websites - just an amateur DIY dabbler, so apologies in advance if this is rather simplistic.
I have three Wordpress sites. For simplicity, let's say they are widgets.com, blue-widgets.com and red-widgets.com.
With Google AdWords, this works well as I send all searches for 'red widgets' to red-widgets.com, searches for 'blue widgets' to blue-widgets.com and everything else to the generic widgets.com.
I am now targeting the Chinese market using the AdWords equivalent from the main search engine in China, which is Baidu.com.
Whereas with AdWords, it's pay-as-you-go and it doesn't matter which site you send the traffic to, Baidu is hard work. For companies outside China they need around $3600 pre-payment. For that, you are only able to promote one website. If I wanted to promote all three, I would have to set up three accounts and send them $10,800 (which is more credit than I am likely to spend with them in several years!)
So I have set up an account just for widgets.com Javascript redirects are specifically disallowed.
What I would like to do is to set up third level domains for red.widgets.com and blue.widgets.com and have them display the home pages for red-widgets.com and blue-widgets.com respectively.
Is there a simple way that I could achieve this and how?

I wonder if you can use many URLs, such as the following:
widgets.com
widgets.com?red_widget=1
widgets.com?blue_widget=1
If you can use such URL, you should be able to redirect the URL through a specific PHP code. Here is an example of a code that will redirection the initial URL to a new one:
if (isset($_GET['red_widget']) && $_GET['red_widget']=='1') {
header('Location: http://red-widget.example.com/');
exit;
}
Hope this helps.

Related

WordPress custom query-string not index by Google

I have a WordPress site (www.AgingSafely.com) and on it I have built a plugin to show the “Details” about various Adult Family Homes (AFHs). All of the details are retrieved out of database table via a query-string (?asi_id=WA_Af_nnnnn) where the n’s are the AFH’s license number. I have created a “Site Map” page (https://www.agingsafely.com/asi-site-map/) that lists an overview and has links to the Details Page for each AFH, so that Google can find and link them. They are also listed in sitemap.xml.
Google isn’t indexing them, but is indexing the more normal pages on my site.
I figure that I need to change my URLs from https://www.agingsafely.com/adult-family-home/?asi_id=WA_Af_751252 to something like https://www.agingsafely.com/adult-family-home/AFH/751252 to make Google happy. To add a little more complication, The “Af” in the query string is for “Adult Family Home”. The plugin also handles “Boarding Homes” “Bf” and “Nursing Facilities” “Nf”.
How do I get the URL with the ?asi_id=WA_Af_751252 rewritten to AFH/75152
This appears to two parts: Change the links in the plugins to the /AFH/nnnn format which should be easy. Have some re-write rule that converts the new URL format back to a query string.
What is the best way to do this?
Does Google ignore query strings?
Are you planning on a lot of people entering in that particular string in a google search? Possibly some will, but probably not. If you want people to be able to easily find your products/homes via google searches, yes I would change the links to something like https://www.agingsafely.com/adult-family-home/AFH/751252. Literally spell out as much as you can, unless a string is a popular part number that people search for or something like that.
Also, is your site integrated with google analytics and google search console? I would definitely do that if you haven't.

How do Website like craigslist create content depending on the city your computer is located

I am looking to create a website that generates content depending on your city location. The best Example I found was Craigslit.They generate a web domain name like https://yourcity.craigslist.org/ when you either click on the city or it locates where you are. I was just wondering if I could get some help on how to build something like that.
The web pages are created using a template that doesn't change, populated with data that is selected from a database server, using your location to lookup appropriate items.
The subdomain (your city) is usually defined in the DNS record, just like www. There would be an entry for chicago.craigslist.org, for example.
edit
If you're asking how they know where you are, they can take a guess based on your IP address, however this isn't very reliable. Google does this also, when getting you search results that could be localized.
So yeah, it is expected of you to type some stuff into google to (try) find your answer (like detect city from javascript will bring up a lot of results for your problem.)
But yeah you would use a service like https://ipstack.com/ to detect where you live, depending on where you live the accuracy increases. (EU has some rules and regulations that make it a lot less accurate than if you would be living in the US)
Once you have a database with content - For example craigslist has a database of second hand items sold by people from all over. When you connect to craigslist they ask a service where your request came from - then use some filter function based on your location to match the results.
Good luck
Your IP address can be used to make an educated guess as to where you are, but it's not very accurate. When providing you with search results that might be localised, Google also does this.To know more about creating a website like craigslist follow here
https://www.yarddiant.com/blog/classifieds/how-to-build-a-website-like-craigslist.html

Wondering how to achieve this (sharing WP page via email and tracking it)

So the following which I'm writing is just to discuss whether something like this is even possible or if any of you would have any better ideas/suggestions or understanding how this might work. I thank anyone who takes time to read this in advance and I hope I don't explain myself too incoherently:
Let's say I have a page in WordPress which has a little bit of text and a video. Basicly I would like to share that page's link or I'd want to forward that page via e-mail to a certain group of people (let's say 10-50 specifically chosen people) and I want to track who of them opened the link and for how long they were on the page or watched the video.
I would like to make this happen in a way that I wouldn't have to make 50 different pages or 50 different URLs for each person (or 50 different tracking strings for that matter). Or that I wouldn't have to take a newsletter-mailer type page in between this process.
Basicly, I would like to make the sharing/forwarding and analytics overview process as easy as possible, so that an admin or moderator wouldn't have to check too many different pages to get the info.
I really appreciate any and all feedback.
[Also really sorry if I posted this in the wrong place. Please feel free to redirect me to a corresponding slot].
Technically, Google Analytics isn't meant to be used to track this specifically- it's typically meant to track groups of anonymized users. That being said, it is capable of doing this (but may not be as automated as you had hoped).
You are correct in thinking that you'd either need to duplicate the pages or create multiple different campaign URLs.
The other thing to keep in mind is that as emails are forwarded, there is no way to update the URL after the email has been sent, so if you email me and I forward it to someone else who clicks through, you're going to think someone else is me.
One way around this would be if you know your users IP addresses (not only is that a big "if", but it can also be spoofed), or some other uniquely identifying feature (any chance these people have signed-up through your website and have actual user IDs? That'd make things infinitely easier!).
Maybe you could customize the email to add their email address as a query string? That could still require a lot of work (and you couldn't just share a single link).
Now, you can not store personally identifiable info in GA (including IP and email addresses), but at the server-level you could assign a custom dimension with a uniquely generated ID and send that to GA. Now you've got all the info you need!
Unfortunately this method only works if you can detect some kind of "fingerprint" of your users.
Unfortunately what you described isn't quite what Google Analytics was designed to do. If you wanted to get into detailed user-specific tracking, I'd advise you look into a CRM. Those systems are designed specifically for user tracking as you described.
Hope that gets you pointed in the right direction.

What's the best practice to track a multilanguage website with more domains?

I own a multilanguage website hosted on 3 different domains.
the MAIN one ( website.com )
a subdomain ( en.website.com )
russian one ( website.ru )
To properly track all the domains, I used the same Google Analytics ID and I created filters for each language. The aim is to have a global statistic (age, sex, etc...) and a single language profile to track each domain.
But today the client for whom I am working, told me that a friend (an SEO consultant, but i think he's just a friend) thinks my method is totally wrong and dangerous.
So the question is:
What's better - one ID with different profiles or a separate ID for each domain ?
If you need to aggregate reporting or other tracking) across languages then a single iD using filters is the best way to go. Not sure what would be "dangerous" about this.
As a former SEO consultant, I can say fairly, don't believe anything most SEO consultants say. I think this is such a case -- your solution is a canonical case and great use for filtered profiles.
I have built several sites having a different but similar need -- each customer had their own site (a multi-tenant app) but we wanted to report customer traffic to them, while knowing aggregate traffic for us. The filtering approach worked just fine, and we had several hundred of distinct customers.
Also, you can have both if you need it -- there's no reason you can't track multiple ids on the same site ... Technically, at least. One of our customers had their own GA account so we just had the pages post to ours and their GA accounts. I wouldn't recommend this, and not sure if Google is cool with it, but it worked, and afaik it's still working.

In Google Analytics, how do I ignore a specific subdomain as a referral? The proper use of _addIgnoredRef

I need help understanding and also instructions on how to properly use "_addIgnoredRef".
First I will explain what type of situation I am in. We have 2 subdomains (each subdomain has it's own webserver/application) that is being used as one website, meaning there are links going back and forth between these two subdomains. For the sake of just using an example, let's say we have "abc.website.com" and "123.website.com". We have links on abc.website.com that links to 123.website.com and vice versa, however they are treated as one website.
Second, we do not develop or change any google anyalytics code to the domain website.com. We only have access to the subdomains, abc.website.com and 123.website.com.
So the issue we are seeing is that Google Analytics is telling us that we have referrals coming from these two subdomains. I understand that it's because we have these two subdomains linking back and forth.
I do understand GA has a command that allows me to IGNORE the referrals by using _addIgnoredRef . However, am I safe to assume that I go to abc.website.com and append this to the GA code,
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredRef', '123.website.com']);
and vice versa for 123.website.com?
Ultimately we want to not see referrals coming from 123.website.com and abc.website.com, but we don't mind seeing referrals coming from website.com or www.website.com.
If what I have assume is correct, then I must be missing something because that is what I have setup currently. Then my next question would be, do I have this correct?
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'website.com']);
Do I need the trailing period?
You can go on and on about how that having two subdomains as one website isn't a good idea for many reasons but this is what was provided to us when we first started. We will eventually merge them into one website, but for now let's just say it will take awhile and we need to "bandage the situation".
First off, adding _addIgnoreRef will only convert the referral into direct traffic. If this is desired, then yes, you would add:
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredRef', '123.website.com']); //add to abc.website.com
and
_gaq.push(['_addIgnoredRef', 'abc.website.com']); //add to 123.website.com
The trailing period isn't necessary, just as long as you are consistent across the entire website. According to Google, the trailing period comes more into play when you have multiple layers of subdomains - https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/methods/gaJSApiDomainDirectory?csw=1#_gat.GA_Tracker_._setDomainName

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