can affiliate links count toward google rank?

and what does it take to make it happen

[jbroder]

This is my first post to WebmasterWorld. Thanks for such a great site!

I do pretty well with SEO, but I am not sure about this one. I am looking at some affiliate software which claims to improve the SEO impact of the affiliate links by changing them via mod_rewrite

Here's what they say:

BEGIN QUOTE:

This module is designed to allow all your external affiliate links to benefit your search engine ranking by using short, search engine friendly links.

Default Link Example
http://www.example.com/directory/idevaffiliate.php?id=100

SEO Link Example
http://www.example.com/100.html


This means all the "link juice" is carried from page to page.

:END QUOTE

Now, both these are going to be 301 redirected to
http://www.example.com/

So wouldn't they both count as a link "vote" for http://www.example.com/ and thus have equal weight in SERPs?

Thanks for any help!

jon

[edited by: pageoneresults at 6:19 pm (utc) on Oct. 4, 2007]
[edit reason] Examplified URI References [/edit]

[tedster]

I think you're technically right on this point, jon - except that query strings that use "id" as a parameter may be treated differently.