Safari not blanking referrer?

**flow** · 12-03-2008, 12:14 AM

I'm using this dmr script:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<?php //Grab arguments from the GET string
$SEC = $_GET['S'];
//If on second bounce SEC = 1
if ( $SEC == '1' )
{
//Validate (make sure the referer cleared)
if ( $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] == '' )
{
//Landing page
$bounce_loc='www.landingpagewhateverrrrrrrr.com';
}
else //Bad! dump them somewhere!
{
//Dump location (for metas that didn't clear)
$bounce_loc="http://www.google.com";
}
}
else //First time through--bounce them back!
{
$self = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
$bounce_loc="$self?S=1";
}
?><?php print("<meta http-equiv=refresh content='0;url=$bounce_loc'>");
?>
</head>
<body>
<br>
</body>
</html>

When I navigate to the page with firefox, it bounces me to landing page-- when I navigate to it with Safari, it bounces me to Google. Any ideas?

**drkenneth** · 12-03-2008, 12:57 AM

Safari doesn't clear the referer on a meta refresh apparently. (I just tested and verified this myself.) At least the script makes sure the referer doesn't get passed on to your affiliate

I do not know any good ways to blank the referer for Safari. So, you have three real options.
A. Take the Safari users as a loss (3.5-4% of web users)
B. Make all the traffic appear to come from a certain page that looks legitimate. (i.e. has an affiliate banner on top when normally displayed, but acts as a javascript bounce page (which leaves Referer) when being used as a bouncer.
C. Make only the non-cleared traffic to appear as in B, as opposed to all of it, though this might look weird to the affiliate