Links created using Frontpage Tradedoublers response

08-02-03

I asked trade doubler if there is anything in this article.

THE ARTICLE: When creating links, see if there are and "&" symbols in the code. If there are, then if you are using Microsoft Frontpage / Frontpage Express, then CHECK THE LINKS! Some variants of Frontpage / Frontpage Express change "&" into "&" which would normally be ok, but in this case means that although the links seem to work, you don't get paid! However, a quick check of the HTML source code will determine whether your links are good.

TRADE DOUBLERS RESPONSE
QUOTE: Absolutely true - I always advise affiliates of this if they are using Frontpage.

So if your site is designed using frontpage and you have very little sales, I would advise you check your html source code.

I am pretty new to this, so I hope this is of interest to all yous who have been doing it a while, or perhaps you are all already aware of it and it was just me in the dark.

08-02-03

Ok this sounds weird - I check some links as I use front page a lot some were &amp some were not but all seemed to be tracking clicks and imps fine ???

08-02-03

I can't see any TD ones your sites code with &amp all & as far as I can see unless you just updated. Only a few of your AW links have that.

08-02-03

I've checked my links & the banner ones are ok but the text links have amp; added. Apparently if you use insert frontpage component>insert html (which I do for banners) your link remains unchanged but if you use create or edit hyperlink (I do for text links) frontpage adds amp;

Tomorrow I'm going to manually remove amp; using notepad to see if it makes a difference, it's going to take ages though does anyone have any other ideas?

08-02-03

Quote "Absolutely true - I always advise affiliates of this if they are using Frontpage."

What rubbish!! I use FP and have never been advised about this. This is really annoying, it sounds as though we could potentially be losing money hand over fist. Why haven't the networks made affiliates aware of this?

Guess I'll have to go trawling through my sites now looking for amps!

Kieron

08-02-03

I posted back in December about my books direct sales dropping quite dramatically (they were my biggest earner), I thought it was something to do with their new links but that's also the time I changed to using Frontpage. I'm starting to wonder now if that's why my sales dropped.

10-02-03

For TRADE DOUBLERS RESPONSE, QUOTE: "Absolutely true - I always advise affiliates of this if they are using Frontpage".

Read: "Absolutely true, we've known about this for ages but, as is usual in these cases, we haven't lifted a finger to tell any of our affiliates, but we'll pretend until we're blue in the face that we did and that we haven't done anything wrong at all. What do you mean, we could have put an urgent note on our affiliate login landing page? Don't be so silly."

10-02-03

I think that everyone is misunderstanding the response from TD

As long as the ACTUAL WORKING hyperlink does not contain the added characters then it will work fine.

FP like some other editors adds gremlins to the raw code but in this case the & has no effect unless it happens to be in the working hyperlink then you will know its not tracking because the hyperlink wont work anyway!

e.g. the raw code might look like:
tracker.tradedoubler.com/click?p=1234&a=12345&g=0

but as long as the working code is :
tracker.tradedoubler.com/click?p=1234&a=12345&g=0

there is not a problem.

(I had to drop the 'h t t p..' in the above examples because this forum software messes with them)

Some of you mention having to 'manually' edit these gremlins from your pages.

Instead use something like FAR which I have always found to be an indispensible find and replace tool for use not just on webs but any files.
Available at www.helpware.net/FAR/index.html