aeiouy - 6:27 pm on Dec 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

I think this is very easy. Affiliates pay for traffic delievered to specific urls on their site. When traffic is delievered to YOUR specific URL you are paid a commission. This is the common model.

If you go out and plaster your affiliate id all over the place and someone else changes it are you entitled to the comission? I believe the answer to this is of course not.

If I post an affiliate link to 10 directories, and 9 deny my listing and the 10th one changes the listing to be a direct link to the sponsor and removes my affiliate tag, am I entitled to the commision? Heck no.

Your agreement is to deliver the content to the affiliate URL. If you are unable to do that, it is on you. If Google changes things and delivers it to another URL that is unfortunate, but it is entirely unreasonable to claim you deserve to be paid on that traffic.