I just got a mail, where someone gave an affiliate link, an he said, be cautios, Internet Exporer 7 tends to block/delete ClickBank affiliate referral links. Then I tested it, but with Mozilla Firefox, and the affiliate link was killed! On the buying page below was written "[affiliate = none]" Then I tried with my Internet Explorer (but version 6), and the affiliate name was there. Now that's very bad. I don't want that on my PC, and also that can happen with people who want to buy from me. What's the reason? what's the solution?
The reason is adblocking. The solution is to mask your links. The bigger affiliate networks now employ masking domains that rotate in their link building scripts in order to combat this, but, yeah, it's a problem. Short of masking your links and them masking their links there's nothing you can do. If the string that is blocked by the content filter is in the url then the browser, ad blocking software or anti-virus program that's doing the blocking will intercept it and either munge it from the page or, if it is the page, block it. This has been going on for some time.
I have no blocking software. I just tested again, the link is cloaked, and when I look at info about frame it shows a URL with ?hop=...... So maybe that ?hop.... is suppressed? But does firefox that always and how can I prevent that? So link cloaking obviously is no solution...
Yeah cloaking is over, you've just thrown the entire industry into disarray - zut alors, aidez moi. Give full details, please. Otherwise you're basically claiming to have a magic, Skynet-run browser that is sentient.
Sorry, I've only described my experiences. No need to be so unfriendly. You could surely make a more constructive posting than that. Maybe it depends on the method of cloaking. So why don't you test it out with different methods of cloaking and post your results here. I have posted all details I can. I have no experience about cloaking, so I can not help more.
I have found that as a paypal payment for an affiliate product it was the same problem (the one before was clickbank). Again, using firefox. Then I had the idea, that I could be because of blocked cookies (I know that cookies are used for affiliate buys, but because the links from clickbank use referrer links, I didn't thought, that it was the problem). I allowed cookies for that site, and then the affiliate was shown on the paypal page! But now I tested that again with several products for clickbank, and I allowed ANY cookies, but still was shown affiliate=none on the clickbank page. The link was cloaked in the way, that in the browser adressbar was shown a URL from the affiliate domain, and when I right click in the page, and select show frame information (using firefox), it shows the affiliate domain URL and as referral URL the clickbank hoplink. So I can't see that cloaking is a solution. If someone can show me a link with in his opinion "better" cloaking, I am willing to test it too. I don't want to know, how many commissions I have lost because of this problem.
I have been unable to duplicate this issue on any of my PCs. I am aware that some link masking products out there are actually part of the problem because they load your affiliate page into a frame and the site is unable to properly post the cookie. The problem here is that the marketers aren't verifying the link they created prior to promoting it. As far as IE7 or Firefox breaking the link I don't actually think this is the case because like I said I can't duplicate the problem people are having on 4 different PCs. The most common reasons I have found people discussing include: - Spyware prevention software installed on a users PC is blocking certain ad networks. - Using affiliate link masking software that is not creating the links properly. Right now the only thing I can really recommend to help combat the problem is to verify the integrity of all your links created using old methods and make sure they are still working. Beyond that I am sure your own testing will help expose the most common culprit to the problem and hopefully you will be able to find a way to combat it. Troy
Hmmm, that is strange. I don't think, that are the reasons on my PC, because I have that clickbank problem with Firefox, but not with Internet Explorer. But maybe you're right, and Firefox behaves other than IE, when the affiliate site is cloaked into a frame. Maybe it's also something that is only wrong with MY firefox that I don't know, or I have done a setting that I'm not aware of. But who knows how many people have this. And as I said, I got that mail from a known Internet marketer, that warned about that problem with IE7. It was the reason why I discovered that. Maybe I should write to clickbank, so they can improve something.
Update: Someone in another forum told me, that there's a problem with cloaking affiliate links with frames, which some cloaking softwares do also. He meant that the problem shouldn't occur, when one's cloaking it with PHP. I seached a little bit around and found all people were cloaking in frames.
This is a good topic especially for the affiliates. Do you know if this is for all affiliate links or just clickbank types?
Yes, maybe it's only a clickbank problem, I just found that a week ago there was following clickbank announcement: But I don't have a Spybot on my PC. And in IE all works fine. Only with my firefox the hoplinks are not tracked.