Missing Referrer Urls - some questions

[KimCullum]

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Hi,

If a merchant is getting a notable number of affiliate sales coming through from the network / affiliates without a referring url, what are the thoughts on how this should be managed?

At what point would you consider the number of missing urls as unreasonable / worth challenging? Please can you state your thoughts as a percentage?

Only if it is part of the chain of contracts between network, affiliate and merchant that urls cannot be masked and also that the merchant must be able to have confidence it is a valid sale, could a missing url (or a series of missing urls) be a valid reason for a decline?

How can one prove the sale was driven legitimately if there is no referring url?

Look forward to your thoughts

Many thanks,

Kim

[jonsp]

Doesn't always mean something dodgy. On Awin about half my sales have a missing referer, because I use a meta refresh to put up a "please wait while we send you to merchant" page - seems this often blocks the referer. Never been called on this - obviously it would be easy to explain if I were. Could well be your affiliate is doing something similar?

[Kevin-ProperPrice]

I also use a bridge page which uses https. Part of https is that it strips the referrer info. Again, nothing to hide but no details sent.

[allthediscounts]

I also use a bridge page which uses https. Part of https is that it strips the referrer info. Again, nothing to hide but no details sent.

Without people resorting to switching things off you'll find that crawlers don't necessarily have a refer nor anyone who has booked marked your site.