Question

A lot of services send your browser to another url when you click a link on their sites.
Google search results and links on Facebook would be two well-known examples.
The slower a connection, the more noticeable it is, when browsing on a mobile network, you can be looking at a blank page for seconds. During this time you can see the query string in the address bar, showing some of what is being logged.

I understand the reason for the redirects is so user-behaviour can be analysed, for any reason from service quality to target marketing, and that’s fine. But why do we have to be sent to a different page? Is that not sub-optimal from the users perspective?

Could it not be handled by a javascript call instead? If not why not?

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Edit: by using javascript I mean something like:

1. bind function to link
2. On click, have the function delay the redirect until the tracking query has been sent using ajax
3. Continue to page

Answer 1

Is that not sub-optimal from the users perspective?

Detailed user profiles are, apparently, more valuable than happy users.

Could it not be handled by a javascript call instead? If not why not?

Browsers would leave the page before the request was sent with JavaScript and the data would be lost.