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http://www.domain.com/?origin=hmd

Does this count towards home page link pop?

         

HayMeadows

12:13 am on Feb 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



If I give a third party webmaster a link like [domain.com...]

Will this count towards the link popularity of [domain.com...]

Of course, I'm particularly interested in Google's ability to handle this, but would like to know if others can too?

Thanks in advance,
Dan

Brett_Tabke

2:25 am on Feb 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Be more specific about what you mean. There so many different ways to do links and redirects...

HayMeadows

4:02 am on Feb 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a client that requested I use this code when I get links to their homepage. This will allow them to track that we created this link for them, and they can give us proper credit. I'm concerned that even though this does return a user directly to their home page, Google or other search engines either today or sometime in the future will not treat this as a backlink.

Your thoughts? Do I need to find out more info?

amznVibe

4:34 am on Feb 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I think I have read here that Google allows up to two variables to count the link but other search engines aren't so generous (I could be wrong)

HayMeadows

4:53 pm on Feb 7, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Anyone else have any other input? GoogleGuy? Brett?

I'm leaning towards saying I should not do this - but these guys are programmers and they don't understand why Google or any search engine would not be smart enough to know to drop everything after the question mark.

My gut says why take the chance!

HayMeadows

3:34 pm on Feb 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Has anyone out there used this before? If so, please sticky mail me your website - I'd like to take a look at it. Thanks.

jomaxx

4:30 pm on Feb 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It's not a matter of not being smart enough, it's that many sites use scripting that makes the question mark a vital part of the URL.

I'm not certain about this, but I would place my money on Google recognizing that the pages are the same, although it may take a few indexing cycles. It has to do the same basic thing to make certain that domains are identical with and without the "www" prefix, and that "default.htm" or whatever is the default home page, and so on.

SubZeroGTS

5:02 pm on Feb 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



it probably will not count. google will follow that link and see that it has the same content as [domain.com...] so it might discard one or the other.

i would include a bit in .htaccess where it looks for Google's user agent, and shows a 301 permanent redirect for [domain.com...] to [domain.com...] so then maybe (not sure) the link will count.

nipear

5:58 pm on Feb 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have one site that uses links like this for an affiliate program. Links look like domain.com/index.asp?code=45. There are several links like this that show up in the backlinks for domain.com. As for PR passing I'm not sure.

Also it does not show all the sites in the backlinks that link to us this way. They are PR4's but they still don't show.

It did take a couple cycles before the links started showing the backlinks...

NickCoons

4:32 pm on Feb 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



HayMeadows,

Since we don't seem to know if the link will count or not, it seems that a 301 redirect would be a good way to go. Unfortunately, this may hinder you're customer's ability to track that link. If you're using PHP, you may want to use something like this in your index file:


<?php

$RequestURI = getenv("REQUEST_URI");

if(strpos($RequestURI, "?"))
{
$fp = fopen("logfile.data", "a");

fputs($fp, "Log Information Here");

fclose($fp);

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: /");
header("Connection: close");
}

?>

This will check the URL they've requested. If it contains a parameter, it will log that information, then 301 redirect them to the main page.

If you're using just about any other server-side language, like ASP, you could do the same thing with modified code.

Note: The code above has not been tested.

HayMeadows

10:49 pm on Feb 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks for all the great information as usual. I am going to try and avoid having to do this. Too many variables and I don't think its in their best interest. Even if I lose some credits, its not worth taking the chance.

In the meantime, I'm going to mess around with this on my own site and see what I can find out.

If I could only find somewhere that a link like this shows up in someones backlinks for there root page (http://www.domain.com) and not for their [domain.com...] page (same page).

Haven't been able to find any. I have a hard time believing that no one out there has tried this....If anyone has please sticky me the site!

Thanks again, Dan.

buckworks

11:10 pm on Feb 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Haymeadows,

I just sent you a sticky with a link to check. I linked to a friend's new site and configured it to show that the source was my page, mainly as a way to say "hello" in his logs. Alltheweb has recognized it and is crediting it as link to his home page. That same link is not showing in Google as a backlink, but I don't think it was posted soon enough to be included in the present index. Watch what happens in the next Google update and you might learn what you need to know.