I looked several pages deep for this question and did not find it. So here goes... I sell my own products through ClickBank and also have many affiliates promoting them. Here's my problem. I also put a lot of effort into SEO so that my product page comes up in Google searches and the like. Today, I made a startling discovery. I did a search for one of my key phrases and found the product page right up top. Awesome ... at first. Then I noticed the URL under the listing had a hoplink extension on it. In other words, if you click the search engine listing it thinks you've come from the affiliate's page! This means the guy is making money off my hard work with SEO. Has anyone heard of this before? I'm a ClickBank veteran, but this is a new one on me. What's the best way to remedy this situation? I don't want this affiliate to continue making commission off people who find the product page through Google. Thanks in advance for any help! -Brandon
This is a counter question not an answer. I sure don't have one. Isn't it possible that link came from one discovered on one of his pages? And if his PR was higher than yours it would outrank yours in the results. The spider followed the link from the other persons site hence the result you see. I really can't think of another way that this could happen.
Set up a 301 redirect from yoursite.com/page.php?affiliate=xxx to yoursite.com/page.php Make sure you set a cookie before you do the redirect.
Dear "netjunkie" You are such a brave soul, using your alias and calling me names. If you have nothing to contribute other than insults, then shut your mouth and stay out of the forums, you anonymous "hero." Stop me if this sounds familiar. You're the kind of person who was picked on back in school, so now you throw your attitude around on the Internet because it gives you some kind of redemption. Is that about right? It is, isn't it? To those who responded like decent human beings, thank you.
brandon72, What is the affiliate link that goes to your sales page? Google may be simply pointing to the origin of the link, but may still be giving you full credit.
brandon72, I can probably help you in your problem, but I need to know more specifics which you will only probably want to reveal off the forum. However, for starters, let me see if I have the story straight as I am not sure I do. But from what I gather... Basically, you are a merchant who uses clickbank processing and clickbank affiliates to allow yourself to sell your digital product. However, you are upset that one of your clickbank affiliates that is helping you to promote your product is getting better search engine (Google) rankings than you are on certain keywords. This upsets you because although you want affiliates to promote your products, you really don't like to have to shell out commissions as it seems like lost money to you. If this is correct, please reply to this thread stating so and then we can get the ball rolling on fixing this problem. Those affiliate marketers have to realize that we vendors only use them for traffic but we really do not like to have to pay them for any sales they bring in as it cuts into our profits. If they want to work for small commissions (like less than 10%) or for free, then OK, but otherwise we have no use for them. Sometimes they need to be taught a lesson, y'know. Let's get this ball rolling and lets get this bastard! However, if I am wrong in my assessment of the situation, please be more specific as to what your problem is and what you need. I'm sure I can still help you or know someone that can. Hope to hear from you.
I just had to sign up for this forum just to reply to you Brandon. You really can't be too careful with those all those darned affiliates out there today. You know I've heard that some of them are even what they call "super affiliates" who can sell thousands of dollars worth of your product -- others may be just starting out and having their first success with your product. Why on earth would you want to give them additional motivation to make MORE SALES for YOU? I have come up with a solution for you: Shut down your affiliate program immediately - that way you don't have to worry about those annoying people making sales for you.
It seems that you have offended a lot of people with your thread here. http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=129014 "Affiliate Loses Commission - Dirty Vendor Tactics!"
Do you mean something like www.armingyourfarming.com/marketing-guides.html?hop=kbond for the term "Real Estate Postcard Marketing Book" If that's the case, the affiliate kbond isn't getting any benefit, because the cookie is set at clickbank and the url is the final destination url. It does mean that Google found the link as a result of the link that affiliate kbond set up. So you're benefitting from the work that kbond did. Joe
Congratulations, Brandon. You've no doubt just lost a ton of affiliates who might have put some money in your pocket. You're quite the astute businessman.
I misunderstood becasue brandon wasn't articulate enough. Bu there is a post on another forum that explains the real problem and the solutions. enjoy. You all owe Brandon an apology, although, he was not very clear on the exact problem. He made it seem as though he hates his affiliates, but that is not the case. Here's the beef I found on another forum... This isn't theft and it isn't being cheap. If anything the affiliate is getting credit for sales he's not generating. You are missing the deal here. It's a quirk in Clickbank. The guy is complaining because his page is in the SERPs, but with an affiliate's link. That means google has indexed his page, his SEO work, his efforts, and is giving the results of the work to someone else. This happens because CB uses 302 TEMP redirects. There are three things you do to solve this problem. One - NEVER optimize a sales letter. Optimize other pages and then link to the sales letter from them. TWO - Redirect the inbound link. The comment in the other thread about dropping a cookie doesn't result in the affiliate losing commissions. The redirect would have to go back through clickbank in order to do that. A cookie has bearing here because the meaningful cookie was placed by clickbank. I use redirects on all my sites between the inbound traffic from clickbank and the sales pages. Three - get more affiliates, and direct links to the sales page. Enough of these and google will realize there is only one page and within a few weeks figure out what site it is on. The direct links should use the anchor text for the search terms that bring up the affiliate result. If the link shown in Google is hisdomain.com?hop=affiliate, the affiliate isn't getting paid, and new inbound links will remove the hop part. PS This guy is asking a real question. He has real concerns, and you are berating him because you don't know what you are talking about and making assumptions. There are 14 posts on that forum, and 22 here, and only two posts have any helpful information. Typical board crap.
Wow... I thought of dropping Brandon's product too, if I was selling it... what a big misunderstanding ... I am glad I read up till here...hahah Joshua
I was beginning to understand his post and problem as well. Still, this shows that you have to be careful when you post on an open forum. It is best to not use language that is too complicated or technical that most of the readers will not understand.
Where's the post? I'll decide if that's true! I had another Vendor slander me in a post at a forum, because he didn't know what he was talking about. Not to say this link problem has anything to do with me. I have nothing to do with how Google organizes or rates links, but it didn't stop the Vendor from jumping to conclusions...........and slamming me at a public forum. What's the link? I write scripts that rotate CB Vendors. Maybe it's mine. Someone want to speak up?
Webray, I will try to explain what Brandon said in a simpler manner 1. He had a website with a sales page that is hosted on his own server. 2. That sales is unique to him and not used by any affiliates 3. That partcular page has been indexed in Google 4. But when you click on that the link in Google, it shows up as an affiliate link rather than the real url of that page. 5. The affiliate involved has nothing to do with it. He never hosted a similar page on his site. 6. The error probably arose because of a quirk with Clickbank, any affiliate could have been randomly selected. 7. As a result of this, a sale has been credited to an affiliate who has got nothing to do it because the page does not belong to him.
My explanation: He has a single product page... the affiliates link to the same product page, so Google just found it through one of his affiliates' links, and used the affiliate URL in the index. Right? One guy mentioned that Google might eventually realize that all of the affiliate URL's are linking to the same page, and fix it somehow...