That's Fkd up if you remove those.
Affs have worked to get those links indexed - benefitting both you and them and you're going tohave them kicked out of the index?
Guess that's reason to create your own product - let Affs do the work then screw'm over and keep 100%.
If for some reason your income drops after removing the URLs just remember you did it to yourself.
Mike
Posted via Mobile Device
I understand your thinking. - If his site is showing up with the aff ref included, then it's because they're doing a better job backlinking to his site than he is. So his solution to make sure all the work done to get his site moved to the top of the serp is to remove the ref code so anyone clicking the link from google won't be credited to the aff?
If that were the case it would be pretty shitty, but that's not how hoplinks work.
Just having a url that includes the ?hop=aff isn't going to help the affiliate anyway. That's just the resolved url AFTER a visitor already past through a hoplink. Even if a visitor clicks on a link like productvendor.com/?hop=aff the visitors that arrive at the site aren't credited to the vendor. They have to actually pass though the affiliateid.productid.hop.clickbank.net/ link first so clickbank can set a cookie on the visitors pc. No matter what he does to remove the ?hop=, whether by using robots.txt, a redirection, or whatever the affiliate will get credit as long as the cookie was set on the visitors pc.
That's why affiliates should never be backlinking directly to a hoplink. Posting hoplinks is only good for getting traffic directly from the site you posted it on. It will do you no good as a backlink for seo, and actually will as pointed out above give benefit only to the seo of the site without crediting your ref code. That's all fine and good if you're trying to promote a product without having your own website. If you do have your own website though you should never promoted the hoplink. Always create a page promoting the product on your own site, and then do your backlinking to that site. Presell the product on your site, but only enough to prep them for reading the vendors sales page and then use your hoplink to send them there.
Doing it that way will make sure that all the backlinking you do will be for the benefit of your own promotional efforts. If you're doing a better job at seo than the vendor then your page could possibly outrank his in the serp. That's still good for the vendor because all clicks to your page will ultimately be targeted to his salespage anyway so it's good for both of you. If enough affiliates are doing that good of a job, then a single vendor product can dominate the top of the serp.
edit - one thing dabosh should consider though is how the ref codes are getting indexed. I've looked for things before and then noticed the same site listed multiple times in the serp just with different ?hop=. I don't know how google indexing deals with it regarding dupe content, but it definately indexes them as seperated pages. Of course he might be right, by compining all of that into a single page might make it indes higher. I guess it would depend on the situation. If your site turns up 6 times on the first page of google with diff ?hop= then leave it alone, but it your site has a lot of listings but none are on the top pages then do what you can to combine all the efforts to just your page without the ?hop=. I don't know if I explained that very well. I hope you understand me.
