php how to find the location where a user came from?

Question

simple question:

how to find the location (url) where a user came from before accessing my page?

and

how to find the location (url) where a user goes after exiting my webpage?

any ideas where i should start? thanks

Answer 1

In PHP, you can use the $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] to know where the user came from.

There is no mechanism to know where the user is going, unless they clicked a link on your site to leave your page. (If that is the kind of exit that you want to track, you'll need to rely on javascript and implement something like Google Analytics outbound link tracking: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55527)