Using PHP for outbound links

[mobillica]

Hi people, even though Ive been in this SEO/affiliate game for almost four years now with great success, I still only know the basics of programming.

However, I have something that is very important that I want to do

I basically want to change all my affiliate URLs to a php script for example:

http://www.mywebsite.com/link.php?p=freedvd

I dont want the spiders to read all my affiliate links!

Is this a difficult thing to do? Can someone point me in the right direction.

I would be very grateful for some advice. Many Thanks

[phildarv]

Hi

Try this site:

http://www.stevedawson.com/article0006.php

Does exactly what you want

[mobillica]

Thats superb Phillip! Thanks matey!

Im a complete beginner at this type of thing -

Just a quick question - Where do you actually place the script?

[mobillica]

No prob. Being a dumbass!

All sorted now!

I was wondering how this script would effect SEO?

Does google spider the jump.php file?

[purple]

can someone explain what benefit using a php script to hide links has.
I normally use them so I can amended loads of links on different at same time

Is there any SE advantageS?

[phildarv]

I use them to prevent PR loss to merchant/network sites & for the ease of updating the link in one place.

I havnt sufferred at the hands of search engines as a result of using this method (yet )

[eskimo]

Besides Page Rank leakage, others don't like displaying the url for fear of spyware.

Intrestingly, it does make it harder for a SEs to detect that your site is an affiliate site and therefore it offers some protection in that way.

I have a jump page, but instead I just feed it the entire url. This has caused problems with some urls so I have to urlencode them. Currently, it's not used for any affiliate links, as I'm unsure whether it's reliable enough for tracking.

[mobillica]

Well, if it disguises that your site is an affy site, and reduces your outbound links on your homepage to zero (in the eyes of google), then this is an incredibly powerful tool for SEO

[morleymouse]

SE's can follow these links.

some merchants with really poor SE optimisation suffer from this as well as you search for a keyword and can just see plain affiliate links like tracker.networks.com/jump.php?m=XXX&a=XXXX

so they do count as outbound links, all you do is hide it from the public, which can be done with mouseover stuff

but it does make it easier to update multiple links at the same time, even on multiple sites. even better if you start bringing databases in then you can have thousands of links going through your jump file.

but dont start thinking that just because its a script SE's dont know what your doing

[mobillica]

Is there any way you can stop search engines spidering the links?

Can you add any code to the php file?

[morleymouse]

you could put the jump.php script in a folder called 'exit' or something then add that folder as disalowed in your robots.txt file.

be warned though you do want outbound links on your site, not sure where I read this but something about PR black holes, if google see's you have no outbound links they know your hiding them and you get penalised.

or you could call all links via javascript, spiders generally cant read that as its client side. php is server side so any coding thats been placed in the file has already been run by the time a spider loads the file and they just see the output

[mobillica]

mmm, that might work.

I do want some outbound links from my homepage, but i want to be selective about these. For example I want some normal http:// links to some authority sites, but blocking the majority of those affy links would be a benefit.

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