Is there a way to ensure PR from incoming affiliate links?

It's not the reason behind an affiliate program, but it would be nice

[limitup]

If we had an in-house affiliate program and had 100s or even 1000s of sites linking to us, is there a way to best structure the incoming affiliate links so that PR is passed to us?

I understand that is not the point behind an affiliate program, but it would be a nice added benefit. I know that most savvy affiliates will probably use the nofollow tag, etc. but many, many sites that linked to us would not.

Our proposed URL structure would have affiliates linking to us such as:

[oursite.com...] (where abc is the affiliate id)

This would really be re-written internally to:

[oursite.com...]

The script would do some processing and then redirect to our homepage. Any chance PR would be passed in this scenario? If not, is there a better way to structure the links that we would be giving out to affiliates?

[jorj]

I would not redirect. If your product page is prod.cgi then add one more affiliate parameter to it and haveit requested ad /prod/affiliateid/index.html?%{QUERY_STRING}

[limitup]

Thanks for the reply. Is there a definitive answer to this, or is it all still a pretty "gray" area?

I mean, this question really applies to all incoming traffic. We use a highly sophisticated tracking system to monitor all incoming traffic. It tracks unique and repeat visitors, conversions, activity at our site, etc. This is all invaluable information, and we really can't afford to just have everyone linking directly to our homepage.

Our tracking system uses links similar to the one I posted above, where each traffic source is assigned a code. The URL is internally re-written using mod_rewrite to a script which does some processing, and then the user is instantly redirected to our homepage.

Is it the same type of situation where ideally we should build the tracking system code directly into our homepage, so no redirection is involved?

I guess this is pretty important and I'm just trying to make sure we are doing everything possible to gain PR. Truthfully we don't care about PR, but our link partners seem to. =)

[jorj]

I must admit that there is a small gray area here. It really depends of how search engine treats your PR. I can say I've set a 301 redirect on a domain wich had a PR once but I do not see the PR transfered to my new domain.

Doing the processing on the main page should eliminate the gray area and that page WILL HAVE to get a good PR. Add the id of the affiliate at the end of the hompage's url and put the processing between an IF block so only the affiliates will benefit of the processing while your main page won't be slower than it is now

[peewhy]

Would you be running the actual affiliate program or would an affiliate management company be deployed?

[limitup]

I checked with our techie and he said that with both the affiliate (in development) and regular tracking systems, the "redirects" are handled with either meta refreshes, or by outputting a Location header. So I guess technically they aren't 301 or 302 redirects, because meta refresh and location headers both return a 200 OK response. Problem is, I would assume that if anything PR would be passed to the specific tracking URLs such as:

[oursite.com...]
[oursite.com...]
etc.

... but in reality these aren't really even pages, and they definitely don't have links to the rest of our site, so even if PR is being passed to these tracking links it's a deadend and we aren't really getting any PR. Is that right?

[edited by: limitup at 6:19 pm (utc) on Mar. 14, 2005]

[limitup]

Everything is and would be done in-house, so we have complete control over everything from a technical standpoint.

[peewhy]

Two things to consider;

To try and achieve any form of link credit you'll need to pay a lot of attention to the query string, in reality it is going to travel through a commission management mechanism. I doubt if it will become an inward bound link.....but I will stand corrected, I'm sure!

The other, slightly off topic is that the big affiliate companies already have thousands of individuals constantly seeking new programs. Saves a lot of slog!

[oddsod]

http://www.oursite.com/link/abc.htm

Why don't you just detect user agent and send SEs to this page but send everyone else to script.cgi?abc? Then the SEs see one page for every affiliate and that page has your nav bar distributing PR to the rest of the site. Creating one page for each affiliate can be done automatically and, if it uses data the affiliate provides it could even get around dup content.

PR doesn't, of course, make a great deal of difference to your position in SERPs.

[edited by: oddsod at 6:35 pm (utc) on Mar. 14, 2005]

[jorj]

Technical, a HTML redirect is a 200, but a 'Location:' redirect can be a 301. Am I too techincal? :)

[limitup]

I totally understand that PR isn't nearly as important as it used to be in regards to SERPs, that's what is frustrating because this whole exercise is almost a waste of time. The only reason we're doing it is because we've found most of our link partners, and potential link partners, really do care about PR.

Mainly we are more concerned about our general tracking system as opposed to our new affiliate program. We need to build our PR a little to help improve the results of our link building campaigns, but at the same time we need to track all incoming traffic as opposed to just having our partners link to our homepage.

We just tested a bunch of scripts that redirect via a Location header and they all return 200 OK. Hmm...

[jorj]

Suppose I have homepage.cgi as home and affiliate.cgi as referal. Then I would have this inside homepage.cgi:

if(requeted parameter affiliate_id){
include affiliate.cgi;
}

..and I will give this link to my affilites:
homepage.cgi?affiliate_id=12345

and that's it. You'll have the processing right into the front page - no more redirects.

[limitup]

I've read over and over that if you have incoming links to scripts with query strings such as page.cgi?a=1212 etc. that no PR will be passed to that page.?

This whole PR thing is so confusing to me. I mean, most for-profit sites that are run by marketers with at least half a brain use some kind of tracking system to track and monitor their incoming traffic, conversions from that traffic, etc. But from what I've been reading it seems that no PR would ever be passed to any of these types of dynamic links.

It makes no sense to me that Google's PR system would be based on such a faulty concept, and that billions of legit sites and pages would be receiving no PR just because they are smart enough to use a tracking system. I mean, what for-profit site is going to spend money on advertising and then just send all the traffic to their homepage ...

What am I missing here?

[limitup]

Ok after a bunch of research I'm more or less convinced that 301 redirects will and do pass PR. The bonus is that this is a lot easier to work with then having to reconfigure our affiliate system and our general tracking scripts. Instead all we have to do is always make sure to use 301 redirects instead of meta refreshes, 302s etc.

I guess the deciding factor was that Google itself suggests using 301 redirects, on a help page I found on their site. Plus the fact that we are only talking about redirecting within the same domain. I guess the bottom line is that it just doesn't make sense that they wouldn't pass PR with a 301 redirect within the same domain ...

I guess the only question that remains is regarding a page with a query string, such as index.cgi?a=1, index.cgi?a=2 etc. Does index.cgi gather all the PR, or does G treat each query string as a separate page with its own PR? Again I couldn't imagine they would do that since it makes no sense, but I've read it explained both ways.

[jorj]

use homepage.cgi/12345/ instead

[limitup]

If you do it that way, won't each individual URL collect it's own PR, as opposed to homepage.cgi?

[jorj]

Even better. You wouldn't want to promote general keywords but your products. So having PR on product pages is actually excellent.

[martinibuster]

Hmmm, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a link to yoursite.com?keyword-phrase-123affid cause the keyword phrase to register like an anchor?

Whether it transfers PR I would think it would, but in any case, the anchor text value has import, imo.

[limitup]

Interesting idea ... never thought of that. You could even have a handful of different links you gave out so all of your affiliates weren't passing the exact same anchor text. I wonder ...