hidding affiliate links from search engines?

what is the best practice?

[followgreg]

Hi,

Please don't tell me this question was asked already...I know - But I can't find a straight answer :)

--> How can I have affiliate links on a site without Search engines reading it.?
Is there a common best practices?
Should I just robot.txt affiliate links?
Is there any issue for the vendor to track clicks from my site etc?

The goal is not that much hidding from SE but protecting the affiliate ID's somehow too.

I want to keep being under search engines guidelines...

[pizzaiolo]

buy a throw away domain dissalow indexing it from all search engines add it at your account in your affiliate program and send there your customers to to click ,or by a small banner (better) or by text.

[Dayo_UK]

301 redirect from pages that are excluded by robots.txt

Simple bit of PHP and header redirect or run from a database and then you dont need to create hundreds of pages with redirects to each merchant.

Or - hmmz - stick them in an iframe and exclude the iframe from indexing. Would not recommend keywords stuffing the <iframe> tag though.

>>>Is there a common best practices?

The redirect is pretty common practice - make the links look nicer too - eg if you link to http.//mysite.com/product/1.html looks better than link to http.//affcompany.php&id=5485048aff=143480380 etc.

>>>Should I just robot.txt affiliate links?

Yes, Exclude the pages with the redirect. Esp 301 - you dont want to hijack your merchant :(

>>>Is there any issue for the vendor to track clicks from my site etc?

PHP Header redirect works fine as the cookies are still placed.

[followgreg]

Guys, your help is much appreciated!

Thanks a bunch for your advices Dayo, good to hear that I can be ethical and still protect affiliate info - I will definately not use anything that could hurt the merchant site either! :)