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This first function (getReferalHost) simply obtains the referal URL and uses the PHP function parse_url() to break things down. Then it's a simple set of 'if' statements to return a user-friendly hostname. So whereas the hostname might be images.google.com, I'm using &quot;strstr&quot; to check whether the string 'google' is in the URL, and so on. It's not foolproof but it's okay. 
 
 
function getReferalHost() 
{ 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $refer = parse_url($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $host = $refer['host']; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if(strstr($host,'google')) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return 'Google'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; elseif(strstr($host,'yahoo')) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return 'Yahoo'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; elseif(strstr($host,'bing')) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return 'Bing'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
} 
 
This next function (getKeywords) parses the referal URL again (not best practice is it? Shame on me). Then I've got a specific preg_match for each of the different vendors (based on the URLs that each of them uses. Google will format their query as such: http://www.google.com/search?&amp;rls=en&amp;q=seopher+another+keyword so I know that what I'm after starts with '&amp;q=' with the keywords separated by '+'. So the regex used matches that. Yahoo and MSN do exactly the same, just with slightly different syntax - hence the need for the 'if' statement. 
 
 
function getKeywords() 
{ 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $refer = parse_url($_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $host = $refer['host']; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $refer = $refer['query']; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if(strstr($host,'google')) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //do google stuff 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $match = preg_match('/&amp;q=([a-zA-Z0-9+-]+)/',$refer, $output); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $querystring = $output[0]; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $querystring = str_replace('&amp;q=','',$querystring); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $keywords = explode('+',$querystring); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return $keywords; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; elseif(strstr($host,'yahoo')) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //do yahoo stuff 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $match = preg_match('/p=([a-zA-Z0-9+-]+)/',$refer, $output); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $querystring = $output[0]; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $querystring = str_replace('p=','',$querystring); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $keywords = explode('+',$querystring); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return $keywords; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; elseif(strstr($host,'bing')) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //do msn stuff 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $match = preg_match('/q=([a-zA-Z0-9+-]+)/',$refer, $output); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $querystring = $output[0]; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $querystring = str_replace('q=','',$querystring); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $keywords = explode('+',$querystring); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return $keywords; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; else 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //else, who cares 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; return false; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
} 

Really you can add as many different vendors to this function, I'm just focusing on the obvious 3 because they constitute about 98%+ of my search traffic.
This final function is what I'm using to write the recommendations; it takes the keywords used as a parameter and uses MySQL scoring to deliver results... So it takes the search terms and tries to find similar content on the website: 
 
 
function getSearchHelperList($term, $limit, $currentPageID) 
{ 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $searchterm = $term; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //a function I use to sanitise all inputs 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $searchterm = $this-&gt;cleanInput($searchterm); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /*query that takes the searchterms and scores it against the articles 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; it also checks that the title isn't the same as the page we're already on 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; because we don't want it showing you a link to your current page*/ 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $sql = &quot;SELECT CatID, Title, Content, CleanTitle, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(TIME) AS FORMATED_TIME, MATCH (Title, Content) AGAINST ('$searchterm') AS score FROM Articles WHERE MATCH (Title, Content) AGAINST ('$searchterm') AND CleanTitle != '$currentPageID' AND Time &lt; CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ORDER BY score DESC&quot;; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $result = mysql_query($sql); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $num = mysql_numrows($result); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if($num &lt; $limit) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $limit = $num; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //old school right?&nbsp; for loops! 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //build an unordered list of related content 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if($limit &gt; 0) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; echo '&lt;ul&gt;'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; for($i=0; $i&lt;$limit; $i++) 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; echo '&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/articles/'.mysql_result($result,$i,'CleanTitle').'&quot;&gt;'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; echo mysql_result($result,$i,'Title'); 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; echo '&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; echo '&lt;/ul&gt;'; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; else 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; { 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; //display a message 
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; } 
}