Hi Everyone, I'm hoping to start hiding affiliate links on some of my Wordpress niche sites using redirects (it takes some first hand experience with rankings losses to believe that the engines really do penalize affiliate sites, even sites with decent content.) In short though, I'm wondering if I can redirect or modify my CJ URLs without risking the loss of commissions. Will the links still track without the 1x1, or if I were to append some JS to them to track outbound clicks in Google Analytics? I don't care about the impression counts in the CJ interface, which is what I think the 1x1 pixel is for. Any feedback would be much appreciated! BTW, here is the exact process I'm planning on using to hide the affiliate links - http://yoast.com/affiliate-links-and-seo/
I don't believe that you will be penalized for having affiliate links on your page or else almost half of the websites on the 'net would be in danger. The 1x1 pixel essentially counts impressions which would be displayed as you've said and possibly even a few more details for the advertisers in the background to see such as maybe how traffic got to your site and so on. The example that is shown on the website is actually a common way of cloaking affiliate links so there is nothing wrong with at all and you will not lose commission.