Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have an old webserver that encapsulates affiliate links in a CGI program/database. When the link is clicked (i.e., the CGI program is invoked), HTML header info is captured into a local database, the appropriate affiliate link is retrieved from the DB, and then the user is redirected to the affiliate link.
Now the question. This old webserver of mine automatically generates a 302 webserver code (not a 301), when the user is redirected to the affiliate link. There is no way to override this. A couple of quick questions:
1) From an SEO and Google standpoint, will this generated 302 be an issue nowadays ? I do a rel="nofollow" on the affected links;
2) There is a CGI kluge that I can perform on the outbound header - by stating that the HTTP protocol is V1.0, the webserver can return a "200" status code (instead of a 302) in this instance, while still redirecting the user to the fetched affiliate link. Am I looking for Google trouble by forcing a 200 status code here ?
Thanks in advance.
P.S. Updating to a new webserver technology is NOT an option for me here, due to various reasons.
Also you are already covered by the rel="nofollow" attribute in any case. So you are not sending PagfeRank to the affiliate website.
All the affiliate links are stored in a local database, and are retrieved via an index # supplied as a parameter to my .exe CGI program (It is a VB CGI program, and has an "EXE", not "CGI" extension). The .exe CGI program is in a /CGI/ folder, which IS disallowed in robots.txt.
Do you feel that a 302 is any worse that a 301 ? And do you think forcing a "200" (as stated above) would have any positive or negative benefit ?
Thanks in advance.
