I currently operate a .com website. I am looking to register a .de domain but I want it to forward to my .com domain. Sounds easy enough... however I don't just want it to forward to mysite.com I need it to redirect to mysite.com/affid394 (so that an affiliate on my network can earn commission on my sales) They are our distributor in the target country. How would this effect my SEO? Because it would not be the same URL, would Google see it as duplicate content? Or would they simply see it as a .de domain being redirected to my original .com domain. (note it won't be a separate site, same site... different URL) I hope I have made sense and I know this is a tough one! Greatly appreciate all advice I am given. Brett.
Brett, I am only giving you an educated guess, but I believe they can trace where your redirect goes and will probably treat the two domains as one and the same.
Duplicated content is a myth doesn't really affect you, but, since the last penguin update 301 redirects started to be slapped. Your website might suffer drops in SERPS. What is suggest is somewhat of a black hat method, cloak your page, and redirect users via javascript and not pure html/php headers. That's how your website will still keep the content and won't be affected and your users will be redirected + bots won't.