An interesting discussion thread at Webmaster World started with a poster who found that Google probably was striping affiliate URL from search results. If this happens to you, what should you do? Is merchant responsible for this? What alternative strategy can you do to ensure that your revenue is not affected?

The original poster tries to promote a product from a merchant. He started to find keywords related to the products, created a variety of pages and linked to the merchant product pages using keyword rich anchor texts. So far so good, but…

Starting last week, I noticed ALL of my links for ALL of the searches targeted and a few more I got as an unexpected bonus, have turned into bare urls without my partner ID. In fact, I am having a hard time finding anyone’s IDs on searches for his products. The url that is now listed in google is a redirect from the affiliate urls.

I contacted the sponsor and I showed him proof of how his listings were showing up for some of the searches targeted. Although it is always tricky to pair a result with ones own efforts, I was able to provide him with information on how the linking took place, during which time period and how his site started to show up originally (under my code) and how it progressed over time. I kept detailed stats on searches as well as screen shots throughout the relevant period.

The sponsor was convinced that he now gets this great traffic due to my effort but has said no word on crediting me for it, specially now that the urls listed have NO partner Id. He must be thinking he is getting mana from heaven without any sweat, my sweat. I went a step further and showed him how Google still lists a url that was read as text, but whose content (and final destination) is actually different. No redirects here, although clicking on that link does redirect.

The merchant didn’t bother to credit him with the commission. They thought the traffic just come out of no where and generate sales for them.

If you read so far, chances are you’ve seen at least two problems:

1. Google began to strip off affiliate ID from search results - No evidence as of now if Google has made changes to its algorithm, but should have been new data found by the spider, which in turn made the changes accordingly. The spider might find out that many other affiliates were linking to the merchant and figured out those are actualy affiliate links.
2. The affiliate assumed that he was the only affiliate for those merchant’s products - May be he promote fairly new or unpopular products but if just one other affiliate link to the merchant using the same anchor text, he was also taking advantage of other people’s effort.

Based on those problems, certainly the merchant can’t be held responsible for such issue, but nor should they blame on Google.

If the affiliate really think he was the one who rank the merchant, then they can easily point the links to other sites and immediately drop the merchant from the position. Or, if he still want to promote the product, I suggest:

• Link all of the pages he created to a landing page where he request for visitors’ email address and promote the product through e-mail marketing.
• Change the link to a product review article and only link to the merchant’s product in the article.
• and so on…

In fact, those methods really give him more control than what he currently are doing. May be it’s time to show off to the merchant too?

Thread: Webmaster World.