2 replies to this topic

[Michael]

This is a little complicated to explain - I'll do my best.

Affiliate Tracking program as follows:

1) unique links are given to each affiliate
2) link takes affiliate to a landing page
i) unique identifier is parsed and cookie for tracking is created
ii) user is REDIRECTED using a Server Side Redirect (in PHP)

The landing page is on a secure socket with robots.txt DISALLOW parameters

Here's the question:
We're not trying to generate inbound links, PR or anything, but will SE's find this suspect?

[Jill]

Michael,

The search engines have to deal with affiliate links like that all the time. They generally don't count them for any link pop. but they certainly don't penalize you for having them or anything like that!

Ocassionally they will index them by mistake instead of the real URL, however. Just watch out for that, and/or exclude them through robots.txt just in case.

[Michael]

Thanks Jill.