Remove the affiliate code?

Affiliate managers says ok to remove affiliate code.

[My1Rx]

One of my affiliate managers says it is ok to remove the affiliate code at the end of a url that are in my websites and says he would know where the hits came from and i would still receive credit. He also stated by removing the (?) in the affiliate code it would be more search engine friendly. Also no script code was offered. I need some help and feedback on this issue. Thanks, JP.

[LifeinAsia]

Sure, it's OK. If you don't worry about being paid.

Sure, SOME of the visitors from your site would be tracked, but not those that have blank referrers (seeing more and more of those).

Plus it seems like a lot more work on his side if he has to go back and match up web logs with orders.

It all sounds very fishy to me. I'd ask for a detailed explanation from him as to how he's doing the tracking.

[justgowithit]

The code at the end of the URL (after the '?') are variables that tell an accepting script what your affiliate ID is so that it can credit you with the referral.

Granted, referrals can be tracked by other means than an explicit ID in the URL but removing it has no benefit to you as the affiliate. To the contrary, it may prove detrimental.

As far as search engine friendliness is concerned, any benefits to modifying the link would be reaped by the target page, IE not your site.

Affiliate links are unnatural links and they should be treated as such. In essence an affiliate link is really a paid link. With this in mind you should apply the nofollow attribute to all affiliate links.

Boy will that really burn your "affiliate manager".

Here's Google's 2-cents on paid links [google.com].

[jimbeetle]

Yeah, very dicey. One of the sponsors I work with went with a referrer-based tracking as an elective a few years ago. Though I tried to explain that the referrer isn't always sent they weren't quite able to understand that. They luckily kept the original url tracking in place if the affiliate wanted to use it.

Affiliate links are unnatural links and they should be treated as such. In essence an affiliate link is really a paid link. With this in mind you should apply the nofollow attribute to all affiliate links.

No they don't, and never have. I've never used nofollow or any other way to disguise any outgoing affiliate link without any problems whatsoever. In fact, during yesterday's webmaster chat the folks at G stated that good incoming links from good affiliates to sponsor sites would basically count just as any others.

[justgowithit]

I think that you've misinterpreted my post. I'm under the impression that My1Rx is an affiliate passing traffic to a merchant.

In that case, disguising a link is not the point nor is there any reason to do so. The point is for affiliates to avoid passing pagerank back to merchants.

good incoming links from good affiliates to sponsor sites would basically count just as any others

Case in point.

[jimbeetle]

I interpreted it as Google regarding affiliate links to sponsor sites the same as paid links, you even gave a link to G's paid link policy. You didn't mention anything specific about avoiding the passing of PR to the sponsor site.

Either way, outgoing or incoming, an affiliate link is evaluated like any other link, some good, some not so much.

[My1Rx]

Thank you for the advice on this issue. JP.