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Direct links vs Relative Links (In: Google)
Couple Questions on Affiliate Programs (In: Members Lounge)
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-09 06:14
Hello folks,
I have a Affiliate Program is working very good. A typical affiliate link on my network looks like the following one:
www.domain.com/?af=affiliatenickname
where "af" passes the affiliate nickname to our system for tracking purposes.
Well, my question is: how Google as well other search engines spider those links? Are they indexed as they are found or they are truncated till the "?" symbol?
Any thought is very welcome...
Thank you in advance!
Sincerely,
Fabrizio
[ Message was edited by: bhartzer 02/25/2005 01:17 pm ]
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2005-Feb-09 11:27
Each link:
www.yoursite.com/?af=blahblah
www.yoursite.com/?af=keyword
www.yoursite.com/?af=wibble
www.yoursite.com/?af=example
www.yoursite.com/?af=whatever
will be seen as another separate URL carrying exactly the same duplicate content as other related URLs.
Google will list one of the URLs in the index and will drop all of the others. You will have no control as to which one that is. Additionally, Google will change which URL is listed on a random basis, and your PR will be split between all of them too.
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bhartzer
Staff
Joined: Jun 08, 2000
# Posts: 7042
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Posted: 2005-Feb-09 17:48
fabrizio, it's quite possible that the way you're tracking those affiliates could lead to ranking problems. (I've seen issues like this before).
The problem is that once those affiliate URLs are crawled the search engines could see these as duplicates of the main page of your site. And if one of those links gets a lot of links, then potentially one affiliate URL could end up replacing the main URL of your site in the search results.
Here's an example of what I mean, it looks like a lot of those affiliate URls are already in the Google index.
What you need to do is to make sure that those affiliate URLs aren't indexed.
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-10 01:48
Yes... that's the case! So guys, what are your suggestions? Actually that's the standard use of the affiliate links... any suggestion? I really don't know how to figure out another solution.
Thank you again.
Fabrizio.
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-17 01:50
Hi here.
Here is my latest update: I implemented a 301 redirecting in all my pages and my affiliates calls in February 10: as today my PR reappeared and my affiliates links are no longer competing with my results. So this is a good news... the bad news is that before this issue my PR was 6 and now is 5. Maybe I have to wait that all the Google datacenters are updated... what do you think? Do you think the PR is transferred correctly with a 301 redirect?
Thank you again guys.
Sincerely,
Fabrizio
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10465
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Posted: 2005-Feb-17 14:40
Don't worry about the little green bar. Who cares what the number actually is?
The fact is that your site is back in the rankings and the affiliate ID tagged ones are gone. That's the important thing.
Don't get distracted by Toolbar PR. It is meaningless.
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-17 15:23
Yes, that's true, but actually I have lost some position with some keyword... and I think that can be related to my lower PR... I will let you know how it will develop.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Fabrizio
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constructionwork
Joined: Dec 04, 2004
# Posts: 54
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Posted: 2005-Feb-17 20:04
wow - this is exactly what my problem is but i still don't seem to be grasping the solution 
i have made some great affiliate partners that have high PRs. i want to make sure i capture the added value of these high pr sites linking to my site. does it matter what link i give them? for example www.mysite.com/?aff_cws=1234 ?
would that still help the link popularity for my site?
will this hurt my seo?
is there a better way to do it then using these funky links?
thanks.
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-17 23:04
Hi constructionwork.
That's exactly what I am trying to figure out. I am currently using a 301 redirect of affiliate links to my clean URL (without to "?aff..." part) because I either lost PR or I had ranking problems due to duplication of the pages. I am experimenting this new tyechinque rigfht in these days... I will let you know how it will go.
To redirect your affiliate links to your "clean" URL you can just implement easily a 301 redirect by using PHP or other server side scripting. Let me know if you need more information.
All the best,
Fabrizio
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constructionwork
Joined: Dec 04, 2004
# Posts: 54
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Posted: 2005-Feb-18 02:22
thanks fabrizio - yes, that seems to be the general concensus. i am implementing tonight.
how long did you have your affiliate links working without the 301 cause u seemed to have gotten a bunch of links indexed in search engines.
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-18 05:35
I started my affiliate program in late November 2004 and I implemented the 301 redirect only one week ago! Now I am keeping one eye on my PR because appears to be lower than before... I will let you know the next developments... this is pure experimentation folks!
Thank you for sharing.
Sincerely,
Fabrizio
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constructionwork
Joined: Dec 04, 2004
# Posts: 54
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Posted: 2005-Feb-18 13:30
rrrrrrrrrrrr
this is driving me crazzzzy! i have no idea what is going on. it put in the 301 and drop them to my home page but 2 things happen that are not good.
1.) the cookie dosnt set - this is not good. how can i set the cookie and do a 301
2.) the pr goes to 4 if they come in through the aff link - if i dont have teh 301 turned on then that funky link has a pr of 4 also. so apparently it is snagging the pr of that funky url and bringing it over.
please help!
also fabrizio - i noticed that u have no pr for www. and a pr of 5 without the www. you might want to stick to one or the other. eg [link] [link]
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fabrizio
Joined: Feb 15, 2004
# Posts: 55
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Posted: 2005-Feb-18 17:04
Hi!
Be sure the cookie is sent before the 301 redirect. Here is my working code in PHP:
<?
setcookie("afck",$affiliatecookie,time()+47260800,'/');
$destino_rfsh = $REQUEST_URI;
$destino_rfsh = ereg_replace("?af.+$","",$destino_rfsh);
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" ;
header("Location: $destino_rfsh";
exit;
?>
About your reported issue with my URL, actually my browser's Google bar gives me PR 5 for both (with or without www). Instead the utility located here:
[link]
to check PR on all the Google datacenters shows me 0 as PR for the 'www' domain and PR 5 without it. I always used my domain with the 'www' inside, so probably there is a few sites that are linking to me without the 'www'. I think the 0 PR is due to the fact that Google has not yet indexed all my affiliate links with my new 301 implementation. I will wait a few days to know how it works.
Thank you for noticing that!
Fab.
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