Does REDIRECTING pages fuck up your affiliate code?
 

If you have a domain or directory and it redirects to your sponsor, would you lose more sales due to misformatted or 'mispassed' affiliate ID information compared to DIRECT linking?

Any thoughts on this? Ways to prevent or audit?

bump

interesting thread, why exactly would you think information would be lost?

I can't exactly explain... maybe cookies get lost or tracking gets thrown off. But I ran some tests--direct link vs. redirection 1 page vs. redirection 2 page.

2 redirections = loss of tracked traffic

1 redirection = slight loss

direct link = control group

Depends on your redirection method I suppose.

I know that some methods have trouble with the "&" symbol in links and tend to discard anything after that character. Try using the & to replace the "&" and see if it helps.

the number 1 thing that fucks affiliates is not:

processor scrubbing
redirects
bad hosting
shitty tours and trailers
bad content

it is called
Shaving and its alive and kicking

Very interesting post I wonder how much is shaving and how much is cookie loss...

Why dont you redirect using a method that also captures hit data and referring and discards duplicates then compare to sponsor tracked hits? PHP for instance.

The HTML standard has a built in allowance of 3% loss. More than that is a problem really.