InfinityFree ?i=1 Redirect Breaking Referrers, Analytics & AdSense RPM

[Mercy_ree]

Hi I-F Community, I would like to request a fix for the ?i=1 security redirect system because it appears to strip or break HTTP referrer data during redirects, causing traffic to show as (direct) in analytics instead of organic/search/social sources. This creates major problems for Google Analytics, Search Console, SEO tracking, and AdSense RPM/performance since website owners cannot properly track where visitors come from. The redirect behavior also creates unnecessary redirect issues for users and search engines. Please consider preserving the original referrer during redirects, changing the security method, or allowing users to disable this behavior, because it negatively affects legitimate websites that rely on accurate analytics and advertising data..

[KangJL]

Did you read?

Why do I see ?i=1 at the end of a URL

Don’t worry, this is normal! When you visit your website, you might notice ?i=1 added to the end of your URL. Here’s what’s happening and why. What is the ?i=1 suffix? The ?i=1 is a security check that protects your website from bots and malicious traffic. Our system needs to verify you’re using a real web browser before letting you access your site. Why does it appear? When you first visit your website, our security system: Sends a small test to your browser Checks if your browser can store…

[Mercy_ree]

I understand, and I genuinely love InfinityFree. I’ve been using it for almost 5 years now and I really appreciate the free hosting service they provide. The only issue I’m facing is the (direct) traffic attribution caused by this. Almost all of my traffic is organic, but analytics reports nearly 98% of it as direct traffic, which affects analytics accuracy and likely impacts AdSense RPM as well. I was only wondering if there could be a way to preserve the original referrer during the verification redirect or improve the system so analytics can still correctly identify traffic sources… that’s why I posted it so admin could help us improve infinityfree together​

[dan3008]

Intrestingly you’re not the first person recently to come to the forum with this exact request.

Here was admin’s answer to the other person

InfinityFree ?i=1 Causing Direct Traffic / Referrer Loss

In short: no, there is no way to solve this. The security challenge does a redirect with Javascript, and there is no way to preserve the original referrer with a Javascript redirect. The referrer header will be set to the page that generated the redirect, which will be your own site. I recognize that this will cause problems for analytics. Unfortunately, the security challenge is not optional, and there is no way to solve this with the security challenge in place.

That answer isn’t going to change, because its actually not possible to preserve the original referrer through the redirect. The way the servers work, it literally cannot be done.

I agree it would be amazing if it could, but at the present time its just not possible.

[Admin]

@Mercy_ree

AdSense RPM/performance since website owners cannot properly track where visitors come from

I’ll eat my hat if it actually impacts ad revenue. I really don’t think that AdSense cares about the referrer URL when doing ad targeting. They don’t even seem to track it in the AdSense metrics.

[Mercy_ree]

I understand now, thanks for explaining. My concern was simply that traffic source data is important for analytics and understanding user behavior. When the original referrer gets stripped by the redirect, it becomes impossible to properly tell where visitors actually came from or what content/search brought them to the site, since almost everything starts appearing as direct traffic. That was the main reason I was worried from an analytics and publisher perspective.