Forum Moderators: skibum
[edited by: engine at 10:42 am (utc) on Mar. 30, 2006]
Although, I do think the affiliate should have optimized their own page so that they have a chance to change the merchant as soon as the merchant turns sour whatever the reason.
You wrote:
This is an easy implementation for us as we only have one landing page from affiliates. And since that page is not linked from anywhere else, don't even need to put a script to check for the affiliate ID- just hard code the NOINDEX tag
but then you went on to say:
The issue is mysite.com?AffiliateID=AFFID ranking on the SERPs with mysite.com.
As mysite.com?AffiliateID=AFFID goes to the exact same page as mysite.com, there is no value for the user
So which is it? A separate landing page or your index page, just with a parameter?
The second quote you listed is the original problem. The first quote is our solution to the problem.
In our case, we have a separate landing page to set the affiliate tracking, whereas other sites have affiliates linking to any number of pages. So the solution I listed will not work for everyone.
As for disregarding sales that come from a certain referrer (such as google.com), be sure to remember that checking referrers is far from an exact science. They are often garbled or not there.
And of course if you have affiliates using PPC, they will not be happy if you start voiding sales from search engines.
What if the reason for the site.com?AffiliateID=AFFID is so high because of the link to it. EG (If it was Google) - if a PR9 linked to a page like site.com?AffiliateID=AFFID part of the reason for that page ranking so high is due to the site it is being linked from (eg the affiliate)
ht*p://www.affiliatenetworksite.com/fortracking/param=merchID99999&affid=99999&target=merchantsite
That is something like how it looks - NO SITE, NO WEB PAGE. It just goes to the merchant's site BUT it is the affiliate network's domain in the URL in most cases, to track the traffic. That is what's in the SERPS - no site.
If it were the affiliate's site there wouldn't be a problem. No site - just a bare tracking link in the search results page with nothing else. I have had it happen with one of my own links at MSN and turned in a report about the BUG. If you haven't ever seen one like that, you'll have to take our word for it, because we have seen it.
It could possibly have something to do with mis-handling 302 redirects, because MSN was having a problem with that at the time, in a couple of different ways - including a problem with some links right on Google's site that had 302's. In a few cases, the Google homepage was turning up with top ten listings for a search for "silly kids widget words" - Google was hijacking pages with 302's at Froogle.
We're only filtering out referers that are there. If there is no referer, we still count it as coming from the affiliate's site.
Our affiliate program is strictly commissions on sales, no PPC. But even if we did, the ToS specifies the clicks must come from the affiliate's site(s), so we most certainly would NOT pay for any PPC links in the search engines!
example.com/page.php?aff=12345 (aff listing)
example.com/ (merchant listing)
So if hundreds of affiliates are pointing to page.php?aff=#*$!xx that page is going to rise in importance. Of course the merchant is getting some link popularity out of the deal.
To get an example of how to fix this search on yahoo or MSN for "SEO Friendly Affiliate Systems" in quotes
hundreds of affiliates are pointing to page.php?aff=#*$!xx
Obviously the merchant benefits with increased link popularity from having affiliates- this has always been the case. But then again, the affiliate can always add the "nofollow" tag to the link from their site. Or in some cases, there's no content on the page, so link popularity for that page is irrelevant.
We're only filtering out referers that are there. If there is no referer, we still count it as coming from the affiliate's site.
