Affiliate ID showing up in results...

[critter]

Hello All,

Quick question

We have a large affiliate network and some of our affiliate codes are showing up as part of our main company URL and getting credit for sales as a result, even though they shouldn't be.

for example on Google our listing shows

www.abc.com/?660452

This would remove the affiliate ID from our main domain;

redirect 301 http://www.abc.com/?660452 http://www.abc.com

The problem with this is we won't be able to track those affiliate ID's if we implement a 301 redirect - so I'm wondering what solution we can do so that the tracking for our affiliates still works, but Google and Yahoo don't pick up those affiliate ID's when ranking our webiste organically anymore?

Cheers

Critter

[critter]

would this work?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /index.php3?

preventing anything after the /index.php3? being spidered?

Critter

[Bonz]

Originally Posted by critter

We have a large affiliate network and some of our affiliate codes are showing up as part of our main company URL and getting credit for sales as a result, even though they shouldn't be.

Check out this recent thread http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=6643 which presents the point of view that you may want to just leave well enough alone.

Does the affiliate really not deserve anything from the rankings you're enjoying in the SERPS with those urls? Would you be there without them? The fact that their ID is in there suggests that they're doing something. It's probably not random.

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Thanks Bonz for directing Critter to that thread which is pretty good at explaining things. It sounds like this is a search engine anomaly that I keep hearing about more and more. I don't think however those links would be getting spidered and picked up that way unless the affiliates were doing some pretty active promotion in which case, like Bonz said, they deserve the commission IMHO.

Linda

[Marcia]

Does the affiliate really not deserve anything from the rankings you're enjoying in the SERPS with those urls? Would you be there without them? The fact that their ID is in there suggests that they're doing something. It's probably not random.

Dunno Bonz, how do you figure that? How would an affiliate be helping the main URL rank? Based on inbound links, anchor text, onpage optimization?

I've seen URLs like that on a site from AdWords clickthroughs, lots of them with a site: search - and it wasn't AW helping the rankings, it was a crawling issue.

[Bonz]

My figuring is that the aff url is a unique page just like any other aff url and the main page that it replaces. One will win.

It seems to me that that the one that has the most pagerank, relevent inbound link text, etc. would win out in a given search. This has been happening for several years from what I've seen.

That said, I'm not saying that this isn't an issue that the SE's should and would want to resolve. The SE's behavior around this are erratic at best and it likely maddens them that someone is benefitting financially from a SERP listing.

In this arguably flawed environment, without the affiliate having been involved, the merchant may not have acheived that same ranking for the non-affiliate version of the url. Cutting the affiliate out may cost them the traffic entirely.

[Marcia]

Nope, it isn't a different page. It's the same page - the merchant's page - with some characters appended to the URL. The only commission the affiliate should get is for clicks directly from their site to the merchant site - not from a glitch in the SERPs in how the merchant's site is being indexed. That is not the affiliate sending the visitor, it's the search engine sending the visitor - with no actual referral for those visitors happening on the affiliates part, since they are not coming from his/her site.

Critter, the links to you can't continue to come in that way. Can't you have affiliate referrals go to a different landing page altogether so it won't interfere with your homepage listing?

BTW, do you know where that referral is coming from? Are they using a redirect, and if so what kind?

[Bonz]

Yes, same page, different URL. The aff url got the rank. They may not deserve the credit but this is the environment we operate in. Right or wrong, I still don't think that it's mere chance that landed the affiliate link there. I'm guessing that there ain't much randomness designed into SE algorithms.

But, my point is not what's right or wrong or who deserves what.
Just the simple advice: Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

Eliminate that affiliate, and you may eliminate that rank. We don't know the specific circumstances here, but if it's breaking the bank, talk to the affiliate and see if they'll help. If the ROI is positive, then it might be worth leaving it.

[Marcia]

>>Eliminate that affiliate, and you may eliminate that rank.

Oh? and how would that work? Again - what is the affiliate doing that's getting it ranking with the code?

[Bonz]

Originally Posted by Marcia

Oh? and how would that work? Again - what is the affiliate doing that's getting it ranking with the code?

I don't know. I said "may", not "will".
The cure may be worse than the disease.

Are you saying that they could eliminate that affiliate's links, wherever they are, and their own clean url would just replace that spot in the SERPs?

...that whatever they're earning on that traffic minus commissions will be replaced with earnings of at least that much?

[Drastic]

I think it's funny when a merchant wants to set up their aff program so that their affiliates boost their pr and ranks:

"One of the things I did when I started working was fix our tracking system so we would get more benefit from our webmasters/affiliates linking back to your main properties, using our proper keywords as anchor..."
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/...ead.php?t=4479

But when the affs get the ranks, they are ready to forget about that pr and backlinks text boost!

You can't have your cake and eat it too, sorry.