When using the COOP, I notice that it generates a .gif image on pages using the COOP code. Example: [URL="http://ads.digitalpoint.com/t-33465-23435.gif"][COLOR=#0000ff]http://ads.digitalpoint.com/t-33465-23435.gif[/COLOR][/URL] Code (markup): I was just curious as to the reason for the gif? What are the implications of having the gif on the hosted pages as far as search engine penalties? This would be an excellent filter for Google or Yahoo or MSN to screen sites that are using this COOP. Am I wrong? Not intending to stir up and nonsense. But, I am trying to protect my valuable property which I spent a great deal of time and money on. Thanks for the feedback!
Yes, it records impressions. Amazon and CJ ads have tracking gifs too, they don't get penalized either.
Been discussed many times before... the gif is only displayed to user agents that can use it (GUI web browsers) because it's for tracking ACTUAL end user impressions, not automated processes. But even if it was displayed to spiders, a 1x1 image tracking mechanism is very common, and will not incur any sort of penalty (unless you do something stupid like make it a link to something, which it's not).
That was my point. 1) Internet spiders spider a site and encounter the digitalpoint tracking gif. Then record it. 2) Using this information, Google or whatever company could decide to penalize all sites that contain the tracking gif. It would make an excellent filter to determine which sites are using the COOP system. I am not saying any SE does this but it could be a reliable method of detection. Many Amazon affiliate sites feel they were penalized because they had many Amazon-URL'ed images in their content and the same with CJ affiliate sites. For this and other reasons, CJ went with alternate domain names other than CJ in its tracking gifs.
Here is an example from MSN that shows the tracking gif is indexed. http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=2082386852481&lang=en-US&FORM=CVRE4 If MSN is capable of indexing the tracking gif, wouldn't Google have the capability as well? You can ban Google from a directory and even use the No Cache, No Snippet, No Index directives and use Robots.txt; which just affects the results shown to the public. The question is does Google retain the tracking gif information during their spider activity. Just curious about the mechanics of the process.
That's a cache of a Word document. Since the ad network does not support being in Word documents (in any form), someone had to put it there manually (it's a static setup).