Quick question about affiliate incoming link

[Shai]

Hi All, a quick question if you don't mind.

A link to a research piece we carried out on behalf of a client from a national newspaper has got what seems like an affiliate string attached to it. So, for example, lets say its for example.com, the article mentions "Example dot com" which is anchored to

https://example.com/?awc=1111_11919191919_3b6810b33f14h4rt316afb7ab2657453e&utm_source=AWIN&utm_medium=201309&utm_campaign=Editorial+Content

[changed some numbers and url but that's the exact format]

Does Google consider these as NOFOLLOW in your experience?

[keyplyr]

Does Google consider these as NOFOLLOW in your experience?

No, the link has normal weight unless that parameter (the "?" and everything after) is defined otherwise somewhere else on your client's site.

That leads me to ask... where is this parameter coming from? Is it being generated in-house, at your clients site? If not, and it was just cut'n pasted from somewhere else, I recommend removing it.

[martinibuster]

Could that simply be a tracking code and not an affiliate string? If it's a link to the client and the client has an affiliate program then you should be able to tell if it's an affiliate link or not.

If it's not an aff link then simply do a 301 redirect to the correct URL and move on.

[Shai]

Thanks guys.

Keyplyr: The link is I'm presuming some sort of affiliation ID. My client is with Affiliate Windows so the national paper linking to them has obviously found this out and added the ID to it to try and get some extra funding in. Its generated by the national paper.

martinibuster: The fact that the string has AWIN in there leads me to suspect its an Affiliate Windows related string. There is no need to redirect as it just lands on the homepages. Just hoping Google wont see this as duplicate content.

[timemachined]

G follows everything. It snoops even when you tell it not to. Doubtful it will cause you bother as there's billions of those tracking links, and it's not on your client's website, looks like Daily Mail. If concerned go into URL parameters and add /?awc (yes, other, block urls) but it's not on your client's website so no dup content concern. I don't know how G figures that, probably based on who was in first perhaps.

[buckworks]

Make sure that the page "Example dot com" has a canonical link element to designate that the URL without parameters is the version to be considered authoritative:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/" />

Savvy use of canonicals can prevent a lot of weirdness.

[Shai]

Thanks but I'm not worried about the link to the client site. I'm just asking whether Google "passes juice" through those links or does it consider them like it would a nofollow link?

Buckworks: thanks for the heads up. Just checked and it does indeed canonicalise correctly to the homepage.

[buckworks]

Juice will pass through links with tracking parameters.

[Shai]

Great. Thanks for that Buckworks. If you ever come across any official references to this, will you update the thread please?