Does Google read links with "?source="?

[Quarfelburg]

As the subject says, will Google log a backlink that points:

"www.mydomain.com/mypage.html?source=somelog"?

Just wondering.

[apfinlaw]

Yes

[Goanna1]

Some dynamic URLs get spidered while others do not. It seems to depend on their complexity. Something as simple as your expample tends to spidered. More complex URLs with with session IDs etc have a harder time.

[GoogleGuy]

I think we should be able to. Now if you're using "source=" to represent the location that the user came from, that's pretty inefficient. Then the same page can get indexed multiple times with a different url. If that's what you're doing, I'd drop the source param and get the same info from your logs (check for the referer field).

But if you're just talking about dynamic urls, we can crawl most of those. As someone else said, it's best to avoid totally weird/long params though.

[vrtlw]

GG,

I'd drop the source param and get the same info from your logs (check for the referer field).

Could you please look over this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Since posting I have seen a few similar queries and I personally need to resolve this issue before getting hit for duplicate content and/or unearned affiliate payouts.

Some databases are designed to use cookie values for the referral ID etc. Would using a redirect on a user agent or referral basis been seen at the Plex as cloaking?

I would like to do the right thing so as I can track my referrals while not being penalized.

TIA

Paul