Tracked by redirections from a simple tweet.

tracking.md

How tracking is working.

Let's start a first request.

→ http HEAD http://t.co/b6O9bSv5XO

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
cache-control: private,max-age=300
content-length: 0
date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:30:09 UTC
expires: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:35:09 GMT
location: http://trib.al/Lp10bGH
server: tsa_a
set-cookie: muc=bee6c71e-25e4-4652-8cec-e04bd00d4339; Expires=Mon, 29 Aug 2016 21:30:09 GMT; Domain=t.co
x-connection-hash: 6dc8fbd4b7f6288e6448551b9b2c5788

301. Let's follow.

→ http HEAD http://trib.al/Lp10bGH

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-length: 497
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:30:24 GMT
Location: http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/499/f/413865/s/3e908114/sc/37/l/0L0Slesechos0Bfr0Ctech0Emedias0Chightech0C0A20A37836387270Edeux0Eans0Eapres0Ele0Etriste0Ebilan0Edu0Ecloud0Efrancais0E10A438330Bphp0Dxtor0FRSS0E20A65/story01.htm
Server: nginx/1.4.4
Set-Cookie: tribal="F2KiViWNQzm729I0Kweh8w=="; expires=Fri, 06 Jan 2034 23:13:40 GMT; Path=/; Version=2

Following the thread, my excitment starts to…

→ http HEAD http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/499/f/413865/s/3e908114/sc/37/l/0L0Slesechos0Bfr0Ctech0Emedias0Chightech0C0A20A37836387270Edeux0Eans0Eapres0Ele0Etriste0Ebilan0Edu0Ecloud0Efrancais0E10A438330Bphp0Dxtor0FRSS0E20A65/story01.htm

HTTP/1.1 301 OK
Connection: close
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:30:53 GMT
Location: http://da.feedsportal.com/c/499/f/413865/s/3e908114/l/0L0Slesechos0Bfr0Ctech0Emedias0Chightech0C0A20A37836387270Edeux0Eans0Eapres0Ele0Etriste0Ebilan0Edu0Ecloud0Efrancais0E10A438330Bphp0Dxtor0FRSS0E20A65/ia1.htm
Server: FeedsPortal
Set-Cookie: MF2=17kyltn1q1dka; domain=.feedsportal.com; expires=Fri, 16-Sep-16 21:30:54 GMT; path=/

Ok on the road again

→ http HEAD http://da.feedsportal.com/c/499/f/413865/s/3e908114/l/0L0Slesechos0Bfr0Ctech0Emedias0Chightech0C0A20A37836387270Edeux0Eans0Eapres0Ele0Etriste0Ebilan0Edu0Ecloud0Efrancais0E10A438330Bphp0Dxtor0FRSS0E20A65/ia1.htm

HTTP/1.1 301 OK
Connection: close
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:31:26 GMT
Location: http://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/0203783638727-deux-ans-apres-le-triste-bilan-du-cloud-francais-1043833.php?xtor=RSS-2065
Server: FeedsPortal

Really!?

→ http HEAD http://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/0203783638727-deux-ans-apres-le-triste-bilan-du-cloud-francais-1043833.php?xtor=RSS-2065

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 20
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:31:41 GMT
Expires: 0
Last-Modified: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:31:41 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: lastpage=%2Ftech-medias%2Fhightech; expires=Wed, 17-Sep-2014 21:37:41 GMT; path=/; domain=.lesechos.fr
Set-Cookie: pw201409=MQ%3D%3D%7C4c05c42a93e25ec85a1bd30e30f036fd; expires=Sat, 18-Oct-2014 21:31:41 GMT; path=/; domain=lesechos.fr
Vary: Accept-Encoding

Pfew… done. hmm… wait Content-Length: 20.

→ http --print hH GET http://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/hightech/0203783638727-deux-ans-apres-le-triste-bilan-du-cloud-francais-1043833.php?xtor=RSS-2065

Let's make a GET instead of a HEAD.

GET /tech-medias/hightech/0203783638727-deux-ans-apres-le-triste-bilan-du-cloud-francais-1043833.php?xtor=RSS-2065 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Host: www.lesechos.fr
User-Agent: HTTPie/0.8.0

Ah gotcha. They have wrongly configured servers not able to send the same headers for HEAD and GET.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 23215
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:38:07 GMT
Expires: 0
Last-Modified: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 21:38:07 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
Server: Apache
Set-Cookie: lastpage=%2Ftech-medias%2Fhightech; expires=Wed, 17-Sep-2014 21:44:07 GMT; path=/; domain=.lesechos.fr
Set-Cookie: pw201409=MQ%3D%3D%7C34d96bd36ac0c280beb40f2a6c2c9a94; expires=Sat, 18-Oct-2014 21:38:07 GMT; path=/; domain=lesechos.fr
Vary: Accept-Encoding

What about the content?

• 456 HTTP requests
• 47,11s
• 8,149 KB

The body of the page is 23215 chars, but this before the scripts kick in and modify the DOM.

•  23,215 HTTP raw body
• 128,136 after DOM initialization
•   5,781 useful content of the article (text+html)

Which means:

• 4.5% of the page is the article content on the DOM page.
• 0.07% of the total transferred content (all HTTP requested bytes counted for this single article)