Why is there % in the ebay affiliate links that are generated through the flexible destination tool? For example - I want to make a link that goes to http://stores.ebay.com/Star-Wars-Loose-Figure-Auctions_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZ1QQftidZ2QQtZkm?refid=store When I use the link tool I get this: http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=2492909&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fstores.ebay.com%2FStar-Wars-Loose-Figure-Auctions_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZ1QQftidZ2QQtZkm%3Frefid%3Dstore is that exactly the same as this? http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=2492909&mpre=http://stores.ebay.com/Star-Wars-Loose-Figure-Auctions_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZ1QQftidZ2QQtZkm?refid=store This is a link back to my own auctions I really dont want to screw this up. Also, will I still get my store RFID credit?
So how come direct links to individual items do not work when you remove the extra characters that are generated?
It's called urlencoding. There are actually two links in there. One is the rover URL, and the other URL is the URL to the actual auction. Since you can have only one 'url', they're passing the second URL as a variable. That variable must not have bad characters, and to work around this flex tool encodes the characters. %3A%2F%2F is :// If you have a / as a passed value, the server would get confused if this is a directory separator. HTH hanji
Well, when I use http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-1751-2978-71/1?AID=5463217&PID=2492909&mpre=http://stores.ebay.com/Star-Wars-Loose-Figure-Auctions_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZ1QQftidZ2QQtZkm?refid=store it still makes it to the right auctions. So isnt that ok? When you say it won't work without it, you are just referring to when the link actually doesnt work at all right?
Technically it should be in there. What hanji says is mostly correct, except the majority of clients/servers see the ? indicating the query string follows, and are able to cope with unescaped characters.
So are you saying that it is possible for one person to click on the link and have it work then have another person click on it and not have it work? Or are you saying it is dependent on the server that the link is technically hosted from?
If you're REALLY worried about the evil looking % in the urls, you could always setup a page on your own domain (or wherever) to redirect "nice looking urls" to the real ebay page. e.g domain.com/page.php?id=Star+Wars then just use php to drop the $id into the massive ebay url and load it using php header or meta refresh.