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Lots of sites adds "?ref=###" in their URL, facebook/imdb etc. Now I checked this question and it appears that the reason is to keep track of what "referred" the users to that page. But I don't understand, what's the point of doing that? Is it for analytical or functional purposes?

Community
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Ming
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    It could be for any purpose they'd like. Maybe they want to track who was sent from which common referring sites, maybe they want to customize the UX based on a referring site, etc. – David Jan 30 '14 at 13:16

1 Answers1

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As David said in the comment, it could be for any purpose they'd like.

In case of Facebook, it is mostly used for statistical tracking. It helps developers to understand where their traffic is coming from so that they can better optimize their Facebook integration. This data can also be seen in the App's insight under Referrals. According to one of the comments in the question that you've linked, a functional use of ref=ts parameter it to disable the mobile redirect, so some Facebook app developers use it intentionally to serve mobile users the desktop version of the site.

You can find more info at: Fbdev Ref Wiki and Referral Tracking documentation.

Rahil Arora
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