I've seen some affiliates in some top spots as opposed to "pure" sponsor URLs. How does that happen? How can it be achieved, if you're an affiliate? What are the issues involved? Basically http://www.sponsor.com?affilcode shows up rather than http://www.sponsor.com (just to clarify)
Sure. Also, the referer through this way will not have "willing to buy" mind set. So, the conversion rate will be too less.
Hi. I think this is completely ALRIGHT. I mean there's no problem in this. This sitaution is similar to, when a landing page comes up in rankings, instead of the home page of the website. I'll give you an example. Suppose there is an affiliate website, which has PR5. www.affiliate.com Your site also has a PR5, and you sign up with this affiliate. You get a white label for your affiliate programme, which you are able to customize as needed (add related meta tags, Titles etc as required). The new link you get is www.affiliate.com/mysite/ Then you give this affiliate page a direct link from your home page. This page is definitely going to come in rankings for some keyword!
I wouldn't say that its purely based on PR, but its a combined affect of PR, linking and popularity. Popularity can refer to how authorotative the website is. Also, it's not necessary that only one URL will be listed in the results. I think upto 2 URLs can be listed, as most SEs allow 2 URLs in the first 50 or 100 search results.