get PR with backlings using a parameter?

[chrissi]

Hello,

is it possible to get backlinks from other sites with a dynamic parameter?

That is it what I mean:

My site is for example http://www.mysite.tld/

So, now we have a affiliate-program and want to get links to us, google will love. But we also need to have a parameter in the url. So the best for us would be if every member will link to:

http://www.mysite.tld/

But so we can not track which member linked to us.

So we need something like this:

http://www.mysite.tld/index.htm?232435

Okay, but so google will (I think so) do not give PR to my Site? Because there is a parameter (232435).

But what happens if I use sth. like

1.) http://www.mysite.tld/?232435
2.) http://www.mysite.tld/232435/
with a redirect (site moved) to http://www.mysite.tld/
3.) http://232435.mysite.tld/
4.) 1-3 and then make a frame to http://www.mysite.tld/
.
.
.

What are oyu doing, what is the best?

Best regards,

Christian

[kaled]

I'm no expert at this stuff, but since dynamic pages (such as .php) require parameters to generate unique content, it seems likely to me that Google would see all these as different pages, and since the content of each page would be the same, might even apply a duplicate content penalty (though I would doubt this). Anyway according to published data on the pagerank algo, this would probably be a bad idea.

There are better ways to track referrals. If you don't mind writing your own (perl) scripts, you can use $ENV('HTTP_REFERER'). Otherwise, do a web search and you can probably find a script to do the job.

Kaled.

PS
I think the referer's url is also available in javascript but I've never used it so I'm not sure.

[hazardtomyself]

I believe I have read in this forum that if you set up a 301 permanent redirect, Google will eventually transfer the PR from the linking page. I use 301 pages to track click throughs. If you set up a unique 301 page that identifies the affiliate, you can track the referrals and the affiliate page should eventually transfer the page rank to the redirected page.

[ALbino]

There are better ways to track referrals. If you don't mind writing your own (perl) scripts, you can use $ENV('HTTP_REFERER').

My site does this via PHP so we can track where our actual purchases come from (drop the IP and referrer into a table and include it in the purchase e-mail). However, it seems to only work about 60% of the time, unless there really are 40% of visitors that are coming to the site without having clicked on a link somewhere else, and that seems unlikely. Any idea how reliable that code is? Or how many people have some way of disabling referrers? In my experience there's no way you could run a legitimate payout affiliate program using code based referral tracking.

[kaled]

ALbino, that's interesting. I've been meaning to look at this area for some time but have been busy with other things. Certainly I've seen sites that use the?abc123 type tracking - I guess that's why they do it.

Using the robots.txt file, it should be possible to prevent duplicate pages appearing in the index, but this doesn't help with the issue of PR.

This is, perhaps, a problem for GoogleGuy. Someone must have considered this and devised a solution.

Kaled.

[chrissi]

@hazardtomyself:

yes, I think this 301 forwarding is the onliest way to get the pagerank. With mod_rewrite it should be possible to make a Site like:

www.mydomain.tld/the_id/ then set a cookie and forward per 301 to www.mydomain.tld

@ ALbino, @ kaled:

I have a problem with this way to identify a affiliate:

a) It is famous to use NAT this time. So many user will have the same IP.
b) Some ISPs use proxy-servers, so many users will have the same ip
c) not every user will send a referrer

Maybe someday a affiliate is ordering for himself and then he gets no money, beacause we haven't tracked him correctly. If he spread the word, we are down ...

Maybe there are other views to solve the problem?

Christian

[dirkz]

You really shouldn't rely on Referrers for essential stuff like affiliate tracking. In some browsers you can switch it off, and you can always disable it by using a well-tuned proxy.

The latter is what many companies do. You are forced by the firewall to use the proxy (or there is even a "transparent" one) and then no referrers and no cookies.

If you rely on cookies for tracking you have the same problem.

The ONLY reliable way is via URL tracking such "?id=blub", just use it and forget about PR. Build your PR on your own and don't tap in your affiliates.

Btw, welcome to webmaster world!

[BlueSky]

There's no way Google can know looking at a url whether the info after the ? is a needed parameter for a script or merely tracking an affiliate referrer. If the url is written to look static, it's even harder to tell. They would have to either publish a standard ID or method for everyone to use or make an assumption when they see duplicate content. This could easily be abused by those who don't have affiliate programs.

Besides, Google likes unique content. By its very nature, an affiliate program pushes the same products and/or services. So, there isn't any incentive for them to waste more computing power just to calculate a PR, which btw doesn't mean squat to the average surfer, for a site having others replicate the same info.

[ALbino]

So it sounds like the only reliable way to do an affiliate program and get the PR boost is to give them a hard URL like:

[widgets.com...]

Then drop the user IP and UniqueID into a table and 301 redirect them to:

[widgets.com...]

Right?

[dirkz]

It's hard to tell whether Googlebot sees such "affiliate 301" as link to the original page.

My guess is it does not, it's simply ignored.