Is Google penalizing tracking URLs?

What is going on here?

[DeckIS]

Our Site uses the following tracking format:
www.xyz.com/?s1=domain&s2=logo&s3=keyword.

Generally, we rank number 2 in Google’s core index for a very competitive keyword. When we are listed 2, Google serves our home page url www.xyz.com, as we would expect them to. Every couple of months though, Google starts using an algorithm that penalizes or dilutes our core listing results for a few days even up to a week at a time. Then we drop to page 2 or even page 3 with a url like www.xyz.com/?s1=domain&s2=logo&s3=keyword. This has been happening on and off for about a year.

We have roughly 2000 unique “tracking urls”, but only 2 or 3 of them ever cause a problem. Has anyone else experienced a similar problem with Google? We are ready to take drastic measures, perhaps stripping tracking data from some of our links or requesting that linking partners apply a “no follow” tag to offending links. Any advice?

[dcrombie]

Use a 301-redirect to remove the tracking id (after it's been recorded in a db or cookie) ;)

[DeckIS]

Thanks dcrombie, I never thought of approaching it this way. Could you provide a little more detail as to how to do this? Is this a standard approach? I don't do much of the coding, but would like to learn so that I can explain your idea to our coder. Thanks.

[JackieLane]

DeckIS, while I am not sure how to tell you to use a 301-redirect to remove the tracking ids, I do have another option for you to consider that would accomplish a similar thing.

You could set up a Naked Link� affiliate campaign (using Naked Link Technology� or NLT). This type of technology uses direct links from the affiliate site to the merchant site, using hyperlinks that are devoid of any parameters or querystrings (basically, you use www.mysite.com, or whatever direct landing page you like). So, this type of campaign does not use the long affiliate redirect links. Tracking code is, instead, placed on the merchant�s site to track the sales, leads, and clicks. This code calls LinkConnector (the Network providing NLT) to determine the affiliate based upon the referrer. The merchant's tracking code then writes a cookie that is used later, once a sale (or lead) event call is made. So, you have full tracking, without any redirects or long URLs, by using Naked Links and a snippet of code that sits on your landing pages.

I thought I would pass along this information as it is free to sign up on the LinkConnector Network right now, and pretty easy to set up a Naked Link� campaign. Hope this is helpful.