I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
links that I am affiliated with. However, I read that Google can places
penalities on a site that does this as it is considered a "doorway"
page. Is this correct?

"Peter" <petermcphee@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1155772246.441335.215860@m79g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...
>I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
> links that I am affiliated with. However, I read that Google can places
> penalities on a site that does this as it is considered a "doorway"
> page. Is this correct?


How are you using meta refresh to keep track of URL's? Meta refresh can be
deceiving, which is why you can be penalized.

Stacey
--
Crafts - Directory - Your Online Crafting Source
http://www.ecraftsonline.net/
A New Focus In Web Marketing - Search Engine Optimization
http://jezsta.com

"Peter" <petermcphee@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
> links that I am affiliated with.

You mean that you send a visitor to a page that refreshes the visitor to
the affiliate?

Don't do this.

Use mod_rewrite to make 301 redirects.

--
John Freelance Perl programmer: http://castleamber.com/

Quick Bookmarks:http://johnbokma.com/firefox/quick-l...bookmarks.html

"John Bokma" <john@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9821C5A4B4FA6castleamber@130.133.1.4...
> "Peter" <petermcphee@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
>> links that I am affiliated with.
>
> You mean that you send a visitor to a page that refreshes the visitor to
> the affiliate?
>
> Don't do this.
>
> Use mod_rewrite to make 301 redirects.

John, I can't see why the person would want to do that anyway. If the page
is 301'ed or refreshed there doesn't seem to be a way to track right? With
affiliates you have to track.

Stacey
--
Crafts - Directory - Your Online Crafting Source
http://www.ecraftsonline.net/
A New Focus In Web Marketing - Search Engine Optimization
http://jezsta.com

"Jezsta Web Productions" <Please-use-our-contact-form@jezsta.com> wrote:

> "John Bokma" <john@castleamber.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns9821C5A4B4FA6castleamber@130.133.1.4...
>> "Peter" <petermcphee@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
>>> links that I am affiliated with.
>>
>> You mean that you send a visitor to a page that refreshes the visitor
>> to the affiliate?
>>
>> Don't do this.
>>
>> Use mod_rewrite to make 301 redirects.
>
> John, I can't see why the person would want to do that anyway. If the
> page is 301'ed or refreshed there doesn't seem to be a way to track
> right? With affiliates you have to track.

you can decide to 301 redirect

/affiliate/example.com/....

to http://example.com/....

since affiliate is on "your" site, you will see the request, even if
Apache redirects the visitor away to another site.

Example:

lj601042.inktomisearch.com "GET /messenger HTTP/1.0" 301 235 "-"
lj601042.inktomisearch.com "GET /messenger/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4488 "-"

slurp gets first /messenger which "doesn't exists", but Apache is
configured to 301 if it discovers a directory with that name to the
version with a trailing /.

Couldn't find a more exciting example in a few seconds.

Anyway, loading an access log in TextPad and marking all lines that have

" 301

is a way to find quite some bots :-)


--
John isa Perl programmer: http://johnbokma.com/perl/perlprogrammer.html

Fox G Bar: http://johnbokma.com/firefox/google-...stomizing.html

"John Bokma" <john@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9821D2A61C28Ccastleamber@130.133.1.4...
> "Jezsta Web Productions" <Please-use-our-contact-form@jezsta.com> wrote:
>
>> "John Bokma" <john@castleamber.com> wrote in message
>> news:Xns9821C5A4B4FA6castleamber@130.133.1.4...
>>> "Peter" <petermcphee@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
>>>> links that I am affiliated with.
>>>
>>> You mean that you send a visitor to a page that refreshes the visitor
>>> to the affiliate?
>>>
>>> Don't do this.
>>>
>>> Use mod_rewrite to make 301 redirects.
>>
>> John, I can't see why the person would want to do that anyway. If the
>> page is 301'ed or refreshed there doesn't seem to be a way to track
>> right? With affiliates you have to track.
>
> you can decide to 301 redirect
>
> /affiliate/example.com/....
>
> to http://example.com/....
>
> since affiliate is on "your" site, you will see the request, even if
> Apache redirects the visitor away to another site.
>
> Example:
>
> lj601042.inktomisearch.com "GET /messenger HTTP/1.0" 301 235 "-"
> lj601042.inktomisearch.com "GET /messenger/ HTTP/1.0" 200 4488 "-"
>
> slurp gets first /messenger which "doesn't exists", but Apache is
> configured to 301 if it discovers a directory with that name to the
> version with a trailing /.
>
> Couldn't find a more exciting example in a few seconds.
>
> Anyway, loading an access log in TextPad and marking all lines that have
>
> " 301
>
> is a way to find quite some bots :-)

Yeah, but that isn't tracking all the way. The tracking code tracks the
purchase and places a to where it will keep track even sometimes up
to 90 days. I can't see how looking in the stats to watch is keeping good
tracking. A person can only see the visit, but doesn't see what the person
does after leaving the site.

Stacey
--
Crafts - Directory - Your Online Crafting Source
http://www.ecraftsonline.net/
A New Focus In Web Marketing - Search Engine Optimization
http://jezsta.com

On 16 Aug 2006 16:50:46 -0700, "Peter" <petermcphee@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>I am using the Meta Refresh attribute so I can keep a track of a few
>links that I am affiliated with. However, I read that Google can places
>penalities on a site that does this as it is considered a "doorway"
>page. Is this correct?

Yes. You might want to seek out Matt Cutt's videos where he cheerfully
states that it's fine for a smaller site to be doing this in
moderation. You might want to believe him. Then again, you might not
want to risk being penalised and so think of a better way of
forwarding. For all we know, given that secret identity of yours, you
could be fibbing us bigtime and meta-refreshing all over the place.
Anyway, how does meta-refreshing you keep track of affiliate
links?

BB
--

http://www.kruse.co.uk/affordable-we...n-services.htm
http://www.kruse.co.uk/google-mountain.htm
http://www.kruse.co.uk/seo-home-page.htm

Hi guys, I really appreciate your responses... this is a good
discussion.

Let me explain a little more. I am an affiliate of a few merchants. I
want to keep a track of clicks that my visitors make to my merchants
site. This way I can compare visitor Click Through Rates to the actual
Conversion Rates.

I can set up server side redirects, but this is tiresome to manage with
my webhost as I have to log into my Control Panel every time and use
their GUI to do this...i.e. they won't allow me to modify the html
config file manually. Also, I want the page that is linked to to open
in a new browser, which a server side redirect won't do.

So, I use the http meta refresh like this:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.url.com" />

Then in my webstats it shows how many times these pages have been
viewed.

I changed some of these to php and use the header (location: URL)
command, but the files do not show up in my webstats, so I would prefer
to use html redirects but not if I am going to be penalised.

I will definitely do a search through Matt Cutts site for this and see
what he says about this. But do you guys think that meta refresh are
ok?

Pete.