We are running our own affiliate program (program idevaffiliate) Affiliate urls looks like: oursite.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=xxx which is redirected to our index. Wont this be treated by google as duplicate content and cause a penalty for our domain? I mean if a couple hunderd/thousend urls like oursite.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=xxx get indexed by Google (and they do get indexed, ive checked), all of these urls are duplicates of our index (oursite.com) so for Google it looks like you have the same index content on different addresses.
Duplicate content refers to the same page content or body text on multiple pages or domains. Inbound links from differing pages don't create duplicate content. They are inbound links to your page (a good thing).
But acording to your view (Duplicate content refers to the same page contentor body text on domains) The affiliate url IS duplicate content cos google reads it as unique url. Its exactly the same if i would create index1.html, index2.html, index3.html etc, with all the exact same content as index.html. I'm confused...
I think I see what is going on ... perhaps. I suggest you extract the affiliate ID from the URL, store it in a cookie, and 301-redirect the page to the page without any parameters. In the earlier post I didn't read it very well when you said "they are being indexed...I checked". The 301 redirect will remove any duplicate pages that are being indexed. You can request removal of the affiliate link pages using Google Webmaster Tools.
Ok, i've looked around and found to this module for iDevAffiliate http://www.idevstore.com/more_information.php?product_id=30 But i'm not sure if its going to avoid the duplicate content issue, it only talks about link juice and a more simple affiliate urls. We dont have an affiliate program to gain backlinks ofcourse but if its possible then clearly its welcome. The affiliate link would look like: http://www.yoursite.com/100.html , then my guess is to put a 301 redirect on 100.html to index.html Will this avoid duplicate content and will the link juice be caried over to our index? Wouldnt it be a probem if google finds hundereds ourdomain.com/xxx.html backlinks (our affiliates) and all with a 301 redirect? The good thing about the module is that it can be hosted on a different domain as well, so if there is no way to avoid the duplicate content problem, i'll put it on a different domain.
Yes, by doing a 301 from the affiliate url to the base page you will get the benefit of eliminating the duplicate content and the link juice will be directed to the base page. The module you posted looks like it only modifies the url to a shorter version that would not end up redirecting all links to a base page (if I read it correctly). example.com/page.html?id=100 would be example.com/page100.html example.com/page.html?id=101 would be example.com/page101.html Two different pages, just a shorter url. If both pages get redirected to page.html then it would work for you. Maybe I read it wrong...
Robert: It says: "The module also uses 301 redirects rather than traditional 302's. This means all the "link juice" is carried from page to page also" So my guess is that the 301 is created automaticaly on the yoursite.com/xxx.html and it redirects to the page you enter in your Idev admin/software. Ofcourse i've asked these questions directly to Idev support, but still waiting for their answer.