Do affiliate links contribute to PR?

[golloween]

I sell my software online via my website, and I'm thinking about implementing an affiliate system. My affiliates will link to my homepage using links like these:

www.mysite.com?affiliate=Bob
www.mysite.com?affiliate=John
www.mysite.com?affiliate=Dave

Will such links contribute to PageRank of www.mysite.com?

[aravindgp]

there's no news.asp? I belive this makes difference.

[golloween]

aravindgp, I'm not sure what is 'news.asp' -- could you please explain?

[golloween]

Doh! -- regarding the news.asp -- sorry for posting dumb questions :-)

Sure DNBJason, Google will count these as separate pages:

www.mysite.com/news.asp?article=may10
www.mysite.com/news.asp?article=may11
www.mysite.com/news.asp?article=may12

But what if they lead to an exactly same static page? Will Google consider this as a duplication?

Maybe it will, but I believe there is a lot of legitimate uses for 'invisible' variables that don't change the HTML code of the resulting page. For example this one:

www.widgets.com?popups=disable

-- the parameter in the URL only affects a Javascript part that shows the popup. Because Google doesn't parse and execute Javascript, it will get exactly the same HTML when fetching these URLs:

www.widgets.com
www.widgets.com?popups=disable
www.widgets.com?popups=enable
www.widgets.com?popups=whatever

So, will it consider them as duplicates?

[steveb]

What I know is Google will often show simpler index.html?1234 type links as backlinks, and more complex ones often will not show.

I don't know how to quantify "often" and don't think there is a magic reason for this, but I would keep the post-"?" info as short and simple as possible.

[aravindgp]

Hi
I am sorry for late reply I was on holiday.
I am writing back to the following query >
>>aravindgp, I'm not sure what is 'news.asp' -- could you please explain?

For the discussion on Affiliate links.
I noticed taht having a complete www.widget.com/news.asp?ad=12345
will help in terms of backward links, becoz google bot will recognize www.widget.com/news.asp
Now if you take away news.asp
then www.widget.com/ad=12345
what happens is the google bot may not recognize this as a backward link.

Coming back to the question of pop-ups and pop-unders I belive anything generated dynamically on the page due to browser without actual page being not present makes the page duplicate content.Now Google bot seems to have become much smarter in recognizing duplicate content.

I hope this helps
With Regards
Aravind

[swizz]

Hi golloween,

I had an affiliate programm like you want to, myurl.com/index.asp?affiliate=XXXX... but I currently redid it because backlinks don't count, or at least I didn't see any PR boost.

What I did: I made my partners to register the url where the link was located, and then on my index file I made an include to check for the referer and add the click and the cookie, this way people can do a link to my page like www.mydomain.com and the action would be registered as an affiliate link by my script and help my PR.

The only problem with this, is that people can't do advertising on other sites...

The advantage, is that you know where all your partners have a link to you and that they are not signing guest books with an url /index.asp?affialiate=XXX

Hope it helps.
/SwiZZ

[golloween]

>> anything generated dynamically on the page due to browser without actual page being not present makes the page duplicate content

Aravind, that's exactly what I'm afraid of.

[aravindgp]

Hi gallooween ,
I am afraid that's true too.Had it not been true I would have had somewhere arround 15000 odd links in google indexed and linking back to the site with different keywords.
Google treats anything dynamically generated in the form of www.widget.com/index.asp?adv=123456 or www.widget.com/index.asp?adv=2345678 as duplicate content and removes it from the search index.Now I can only come to this conclusion based on my experience.

But what SwiZZ says makes lot of sense.

Hi Swizz, can you please eloborate on this.

Eagerly Looking forward to hear from you swizz.

Aravind

[golloween]

Aravind, yes, you can track affiliates by their referrer, but don't forget that this method is not reliable -- referrer is often dropped from the HTTP request (don't know why).

I also heard that smart affiliates don't trust any affiliate program that uses referrer to track sales. However, I may be wrong here -- I don't have much experience with affiliates.

[swizz]

Hello Aravind,

It is really easy, create a db where you have your partners ids and their sites registered.

Now create a script to search for the HTTP_REFERER and lookup the database. If the homepage is on the referer db, make a cookie or register the session with his affiliate id.

As golloween said, people have the possiblity to hide the HTTP_REFERER, with opera you can even put whatever you want, but what you should know is how many people actually hide this parameter and how many know about it? I think poeple hiding the referer is way less than people stopping their browsers from accepting cookies..

IMO, I think for the partners is even better to have a link without any partnerid or affid attached to it, many people don't click links where an id is attached... I am one.

Anyway, if you are offering an affiliate programm and you are paying people to make a link to you, it should be your way or the highway... :)

Happy programming aravind...

Cheers
/SwiZZ

[aravindgp]

Hey Swizz and golloween,
Thanks a million.Here I go with the solution.I was worried the only way was to payup monthly without actually knowing how many coustomers the site brought.

I think I will go for some affiliates having the Swizz solution and some having the usual www.widget.com/index.htm?ad=1234

I hope this works. :-)

Thanks again
Aravind