Block affiliate tracking

but keep the main page in Google

[chubba]

Hi People,

Had a few looks into this and cannot find a solution so hoping someone here can help.

We post items as /item.php/85756

We ask affiliates to send us traffic as:
/item.php/85756?ref=partner1

Google is now indexing /item.php/85756?ref=partner1

Want to still allow Google into /item.php/85756

but block the?ref=partner1

Is this possible using robots.txt?

[oziman]

chubba,

a better and more solid way would be to redirect 301 anything that comes in with an affiliate link to a url without the aff parameter.

oziman

[ska_demon]

I don't quite understand what you are trying to do.

Are you saying that your affiliates links are being indexed and ranked by google and you want to stop that happening?

Or that you don't want the end user to see the aff code on the end of the string?

Ska

[edited by: ska_demon at 1:53 pm (utc) on July 9, 2007]

[goodroi]

that is going to make some affiliates not happy. affiliates generally want to see their id code in the url to make sure they are getting credit for all sales. the redirect would solve the search engine issue but create a new issue with affiliates. maybe your affiliates aren't that sensitive and will be ok with it.

an alternative would be to use pattern matching aka wildcards in your robots.txt for google.

good luck

[chubba]

Cheers oziman, very sensible! Have now done this, thanks for the help.