What does "?ref=ts" mean in a Facebook application URL?

Question

When Facebook drives traffic to an application, it often append &ref=whatever to the query string. This is useful for figuring out which integration points are working or not. I've figured out what some of these mean. For example:

ref=bookmarks - the user clicked on a bookmark.

ref=game_my_recent - the user clicked on the upper portion of the games dashboard.

What does "ref=ts" mean? It accounts for a ton of traffic. I've viewed source on pages all over common Facebook pages and cannot find a match for ant piece of content generated by any of my applications.

Same question, posted by me on the Facebook developer forum: http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=54866

Lode

Answer 1

It means 'Top Search' (if you enter a query into the top, and then click on something, it will append ref=ts

Axon

Bingo... thanks webdestroya At first I saw "ref=search" when I tried this... but that's ONLY when the user hits the actual search "magnifying glass" icon. If the user types the app name and hits return OR clicks on the autocomplete result, then ref=ts gets appended. I guess thats kinda helpful, distinguishing between various kinds of facebook-facebook search. – Lode

No problem. It's probably much more useful to Facebook (to see who is using what areas) than it is to you. – Axon

related question, is there anyplace to find what the ref parameters they use mean? e.g. ref=mf? – Coronary

Answer 2

As noted, ref=ts is appended to the url whenever a user makes a search in the Top Search input field.

Also note that people tend to copy/paste links in their website and blogs, without trimming useless GET strings. So it is possible if you get a high number of referrers coming from the top search that they are in fact links that propagate outside of Facebook.

Ignaciaignacio

The ref=ts parameter also disables the mobile redirect, so some Facebook app developers use it intentionally to serve mobile users the desktop version of the site – Carl