redirecting Affiliate URL Links

[DanielCoe]

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Hi,

On all my affiliate sites I usually have the following typical links:

http://tracker.tradeboubler.com/click?..............

I now need to hide the links, and I need to have a link like:

http://www.mysite.co.uk/johnlewis.htm

If I use a PHP redirect or mod rewrite to do this, will the sales still be tracked, or do you always have to just have the http://traker.tradedoubler.com to get the links to work.

I suppose this is really a question for Nick at TD.

Any thoughts, please?

[BenKowaBunga]

You can use JS to hide the url -

&lt;a onMouseOver='window.status="<b>http://www.johnlewis.com</b>"; return true' onMouseOut='window.status="Done"; return true' href="<b>http://tracker.tradeboubler.com/click?..............</b>" target="_blank"&gt;TEXT GOES HERE&lt;/a&gt;

[DanielCoe]

Thanks,

I would normally use Javascript but this is in a PDF document where ALT tags and rollovers are not allowed and the "ALT type" tag in a PDF document only lets you see the exact url.

dan

[Keith]

a meta refresh will work

[BenKowaBunga]

OK, yeah a meta refresh would work.

The PDF has www.yourdomain.com/johnlewis.htm - that page just consists of this refresh tag;

&lt;META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="10; URL=http://www.affiliate-url.com?affID"&gt;

(10 = refreshes in 10 seconds)

You could also use a Robots tag on that page just so a search engine doesn't think you're doing any jiggery-pokery;

&lt;META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow"&gt;

[DanielCoe]

How about a PHP script that points to:

www.mydomain.co.uk/db.php?id=1

This looks up the affiliate url and then does a :

header("Location: http://tracker.tradedoubler.com/click?....");

Do you think the link will still be tracked?

dan

[rogerlittin]

Yes it will. TD will see the link coming from the second page and wont know about the first.

Roger.

[FleaPit]

The link will still track no probs but the original page will show up in refferer logs.

[TD Nick]

Hi Daniel,

all of the above methods will track correctly in the system.

Kind regards,

Nick

[999gi]

Nick, Is that true
I remember an issue that you and I discussed with TradIndex not tracking when the links were redirecting. I never could understand why this was, but we tested to see if we got prompted for cookies and we didnt. Is it still the case for them, and are you sure there are no others like this.