So I just received a new EPN newsletter, and the first item displayed is regarding referring URL visibility. Here is a what they said:
We believe that transparency of referring URLs is vital to assessing traffic’s quality. For example, if an advertiser books outdoor billboards, they see where those ads appear and we believe the same should be true of Affiliate Marketing! It is therefore important to make sure your websites or tools are sending accurate referring URLs to eBay when traffic is passed through affiliate links. If we notice a high percentage of your traffic is not showing referring URLs, we will need you to resolve this as only a small percentage should be blocked by browsers. Soon we’ll be posting a series of tips on the blog that can help ensure your referring urls are being passed to our system.
This is a little troubling since I’ve been redirecting EPN clicks back to my website and then directing those clicks to EPN via PHP’s header() function. This makes all of my links appear that they’re all links within my site.
I’ll be doing some tests today to see how I can provide them with referrer info while maintaining my current system on EPN storefronts.
Related posts:
I did some initial tests this morning, and all of my tests using link redirection (via PHP’s header()) shows referrer. I did a simple test by changing the URL from ebay’s rover URL to a URL on one of my other sites. On that page I did a var_dump($_SERVER) which will dump all server variables to the screen. I saw the following:
["HTTP_REFERER"]=> string(59) “http://www.myepndomain.com/directory/subdirectory”
Note, that the domain and directory are ‘fake’ for this comment and not real. I’ll still send EPN a message just to be sure everything is fine with my account.
Thanks for this post. I am an ebay affiliate. I am not a programmer. Can you please give the complete code for this php file.
Lets say I placed my link on site2.com and I want the referrer to be site1.com
How does it happen when a user clicks link from site2.com to site1.com/ebay.php and ebay.php redirects to ebay with correct referrer.(ie site1.com)
Hello Gokhan
Your example might be a little ‘shady’ there. My initial tests with header() shows proper referrer going to ebay. For example if site1.com points to itself to assemble the rover code then off to ebay. My example used URL Masking which you can learn more about it here:
http://www.money-code.com/2007/10/url-masking-cloaking/
If want to ensure that the referrer was included in the header, you could do something like this:
header(“Referer: http://”.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
header(“Location: http://”.$site);
But, like I said, it already appears that referrer is being handled within the normal header location call.
You wanted to see the code I used to display the referrer. On the receiving page (ie: site2.com), add this:
< ?php
var_dump($_SERVER);
exit()
?>
Then change your link to point to site2.com. When you arrive, you’ll see the server variables associated with that request.. which includes referrer.
Hope this helps
hanji
Thank you Hanji. This was helpful
There is some chatter going on at the EPN forums right now. Looks like URL shortening services are counted as invalid clicks.
Will this affect BAN stores?
Hello Mike
I believe this could affect BANS eventually. I think the actual rule is the SEO redirecting is okay. As for me, I’m in the process of converting back to rover. It seems like they’re pushing for tighter and tighter restrictions. After talking with a few EPN badasses, they pointed out that they do not do SEO redirects themselves, so I figured that would be the safe direction for me.
Thanks for commenting!