Help me with a serious Google problem!

[tbp]

Not sure that that will work, it will stop the visits to /click.html? but not to /click.html?something as those are 2 different urls.

You can do:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /click.html?*

Which will stop anything after from being indexed by Google

[gadget]

Originally Posted by John Jupp The merchant seriously needs to understand Contract Law. The merchant should pay all commissions that were generated.

The small claims courts are a cost effective way of addressing this. John's right, they are in breach of contract unless they can 'prove' otherwise. The balance of proving you've done something wrong is with the 'accuser', in this case the merchant.

[Marc Gear]

Originally Posted by John Jupp As for an affiliate's organic listing (determined by Google) being higher than a merchant or for that merchant to have received a penalty (see note on their updating their site) it is a fundamental Breach of Contract for the merchant not to pay the affiliate for sales generated through the affiliate's unpaid organic listing.[/b]

I'm not sure you've read or understood this thread in its entirety. It is not a matter of the affiliates web pages appearing higher in the SERPs than the merchants pages - this was cleared up on page 1.

The issue was the merchants content being indexed under the webgains clickthrough URL, rather than their own domain name, through no action of the affiliate, the merchant or Webgains but due to something Google does.

[Gavinio]

I know the DirectTrack system has a robots.txt file in the redirects that stops your clickthrough's being indexed - this is what you need to do. (Webgains).

NB I don't know a lot about it, other than that's what they do, and it works. DGM don't do this, AF don't and I don't believe Awin do - I've seen most of these with affiliate url's in the SERPs.

[D-Mac]

Originally Posted by John Jupp ..it is a fundamental Breach of Contract for the merchant not to pay the affiliate for sales generated through the affiliate's unpaid organic listing.

I don't want to take this off-topic, but is there actually a contract between a merchant and an affiliate? Aren't the contracts between the merchant and the network, and the network and the affiliate?

[Marc Gear]

Originally Posted by Gavinio I know the DirectTrack system has a robots.txt file in the redirects that stops your clickthrough's being indexed - this is what you need to do. (Webgains).

I added this yesterday.

[Brendon]

Classic 302 pagejack - the merchant site would apparently suck (Googles opinion, not mine), so another URL pointing to the same content has been selected as the canonical URL.

[Mitchy]

It also happens with CJ - their aff links can often be seen in the Serps for smaller merchants, although not always out ranking or replacing the Merchants url.

[moredial]

Originally Posted by Brendon Classic 302 pagejack - the merchant site would apparently suck (Googles opinion, not mine), so another URL pointing to the same content has been selected as the canonical URL.

After reading Matt Cutts' post on the matter, it looks like now the 302 plague is both the more popular site and the site with the shorter URL being given the pagejacked content - and that is meant to be an improvement?
That is the way the algo works, and there is no point complaining about it. Just fix your pages / ask webmasters to fix their pages if you don't want to risk being pagejacked or accused of pagejacking.

The concluding paragraph said it all - the visitor gets to the content they want, what does it mater which url sends them there. The search engines are happy because they have the content only once in their database and that saves them space.

What he did not say was to remind everyone that search engines are really advertising businesses and the only thing they and their shareholders care to have working well is the paid advertising to promote those businesses for whom being on the first page of the results is important.
The only reason search engines still provide free listings (and free listings cost search engines a lot of money) is to offer some relevance to their advertising space, just like adsense users write copy to complement their ad displays.

[befuddle]

I can now inform you that Google have done an update and the url has changed ... now another affiliate tracking code is in its place, instead of mine.

I really do hope affiliate 1761 makes a stand.