Suggest method of tracking 3rd party referral traffic
Problem
This may be a somewhat Ecosystem-relevant issue, but when we work with external companies we'd like to be able to ask them to add a referrer
mechanism that would allow us to track inbound traffic from their tools.
The specific example today is the integration with Jira via the Development Panel
feature. This feature displays links to a variety of GitLab content, linking users to specific commits, branches, and MRs.
We'd like to be able to track the traffic coming from this source so that we can evaluate the impact on engagement from these partnerships.
Proposal
We should document a few methods, preferred by our data teams, that we can leverage to track this data appropriately. This should include documenting the methods that are available, where the data will live, and recommendations for where dashboards can be implemented to track this data.
I can think of two common methods we should document:
- Adding a parameter to a url (ex:
gitlab.com/whatever/whatever/?ref=REFERRER_CODE_FOO
) - Adding a header value to the request (ex:
curl -referer https://REFERRER.COM https://gitlab.com/whatever/whatever
)
Result
This will allow us to track external sources of activity directly, helping us understand the value of our relationships with other 3rd parties.
Next steps (if any)
/cc @kokeefe