How to know from where visitors are coming?

Question

I have a website with google Analytics, which provides information about from where visitors are coming.

My website has a registration form, and I would like to know from where the new register is coming (but without asking him).

For example, suppose a user were searching "cars" in google.com, clicked my link (not adwords), and were registering in my website. How and from where can I read and save that this user was looking for "cars" in google.com and clicked in my link? Are there any cookies generated by google?

Answer 1

You can store the referrer where the user came from in its session:

# in application_controller.rb
before_filter :store_referrer

private
def store_referrer
  referer = request.referer.presence
  if referer && !referer.start_with?('http://your.domain')
    session[:referer] ||= referer 
  end
end

When the user signs up, you just pass that value to the user:

User.new(params[:user].merge(:referer => session[:referer]))

You User should have a referer= method that handles that url.