I'm not sure if I should use a redirect

Question

Hi there,

I have an affiliate link on my webpage. When you click on the link it follows the href value which is as follows:

www.site_name.com/?refer=my_affiliate_id

This would be fine, except that the site offers no tracking for the ads, so I can't tell how many clicks I am getting. I could easily implement my own tracking by changing the original link href value to a php script which increments some click stats in a database and then redirects the user to the original page. Like so:

<?php // Do database updating stuff here
Header("Location: http://www.site_name.com/?refer=my_affiliate_id");
?>

But I have read some articles that say that using redirects may be seen by google as a sign of 'blackhat' techniques and they might rank me lower, unindex my site or even hurt the site that I'm redirecting too.

Does anybody know if this is true, or have any idea of the best way I could go about this?

Many thanks in advance

Joe

Answer 1

Using a 301 redirect simple tells Google that the website is permamently moved. It should have, according to most random people on the internet and according to Google itself, no effect on your page-rank.

Answer 2

You could always do what Google does with search results. They have the link href normal, until the mousedown event. something to the effect of:

adlink.onmousedown = function(e) {
  var callingLink = /* stuff to actually get the element here */;
  callingLink.href = 'http://mysite.com/adtrack_redirect_page.ext?link=' + escape(callingLink.href);
}

Or something like that :P

So, Google will see a normal link, but almost all users will be redirected to your counter page.

Answer 3

Actually I've read (can't remember where exactly) that this kind of redirect DOES HURT your rating. No, it won't "kill" your website nor the referenced, as far as I know (and please do check further), but it will hurt your site's rating as I said.

Anyway I'd recommend using some javascript to refer anything out of you domain - something like "window.open(....)" should do the trick, as Google will not follow this code.

There, refer to your tracking script which will redirect further.

Answer 4

You could use a javascript onClick event to send an ajax signal to your server whenever the link is clicked. That way the outgoing link is still fully functional, and your server-side script can increment your counter to track the clickthrough.

Answer 5

Thanks to everyone who answered :-)