How to hide Affiliate code

Maybe using .htaccess file?

[submitx]

Is there way I can hide affliate program code, such as banner ad or JavaScript Pop up code in HTML so that it is not visible to search engine spiders? I just don't want to be leaving any foot prints.

I thought of one way of doing this would be to use an external JS file, but the problem is that search engine can still read the JS file even if you disallowed it from robots.txt. A while ago there was a thread about this that Google was reading external JS files, even if there was a robots.txt file dissalowing it.

I was thinking maybe if there was a way to put code in .htaccess file, that might work. Can .htaccess file be used to launch pop up pages?

[tedster]

You could take one of the approaches people use to hide mailto: links from spam harvesters - use external javascript to break the URL into three parts, each one a separate variable. Then reassemble the link on-page with document.write()

Search engine spiders may look at javascript (as text) to find "obvious" urls they might try, but AFAIK they don't programatically parse javascript - the danger of malicious code and all that.

[ogletree]

You could have the URL's goto to an internal page that has a redirect and is excluded in the rotbots.txt and exclude the gbot useragent from going to that page.