Originally Posted by FightThisPatent

using your walmart analogy...

a surfer comes to your portal because he knows you have lots of different links, and he knows he visited your section about car speakers before.

when he clicks on the link, he goes to walmart.

like many sites, the affiliate ID is stored as a cookie, not in the URL.

the surfer is finally ready to buy, but instead of going back to your portal, he already remembered that it was at walmart.. either cuz he bookmarked it or he just typed in the domain name.

in either case, if he had "privacy mode" on, your affiliate ID cookie would not be there, and when he was ready to buy, you didn't get the credit.

Fight the wally-world!