Question Using a Referrer/UserAgent with WebBrowser

[digitaldrew]

Hey everyone, quick question... I'm trying to set a referrer in the webbrowser (either via referrer or useragent) but it doesn't appear to be working. I'm testing with Google Analytics and I can see my visit come in when I hit the homepage using the webbrowser, but it shows it as a "Direct" hit rather than the referrer I have set..

This is my code

Me.wb.Navigate(lstURLs.SelectedItem, "", Nothing, "Referer: " & selectedReferrer & vbCrLf & "User-Agent: " & selectedUserAgent & vbCrLf)

Any idea what I could be doing wrong? Thanks!

 

[JohnH]

Have you debugged what values those expressions actually evaluate to?
I tested this with valid strings for url/referer/agent and both referer/agent is detected correctly at these two urls:
Referer Test
Browser UserAgent Test

 

[digitaldrew]

Hey John, thanks for your reply! I did debug to see what the values were and they appeared correct, although I noticed many of the useragents I was trying were extremely outdated. Could that have anything to do with it??

 

[JohnH]

Could that have anything to do with it??

I don't know, maybe GA validates the referral, ie checks that there is a link to current url from given referrer.

 

[Herman]

Some sites also protect against referer spoofing through their own proxy. This will be true of any website that checks referer to determine if you just saw a paid ad. Not much you can do to go around those.