DirectLink tracking

DirectLinks is advanced feature that allows your affiliates to link directly to your site without additional parameters in the URL. 

So for example, instead of: http://www.yoursite.com/?a_aid=12345&a_bid=67890
you can use only: http://www.yoursite.com/

DirectLink advantages

This kind of linking has several advantages: 

• Visitor doesn't know he is clicking on affiliate link.
  Many people are not so keen clicking on a link they recognize as affiliate link. If your affiliates will use affiliate links in their blog or review site, visitors will know that they earn commissions for the promoted products, and they would less likely believe in thereview and click on the link.
  If you'll use DirectLinks nobody will know the links are promoting your products. 

• Visitor will not damage or remove the affiliate parameters from URL.
  There are people who don't like to purchase through affiliate links, even if there is no disadvantage for them. Such people rather copy the URL to their browser and remove the affiliate parameters.
  Your affiliates can protect agains this using the affiliate link cloaker, but if they'll use DirectLinks, they don't need to worry about anything. 
  

• It is the best Search Engine friendly method.
  To reach high position on Google, you (as a merchant) need as many backlinks pointing to your website as possible.If your affiliates use DirectLinks, they link to your website without any additional parameters, it is the best SEO method.
  

How it works

Visitor referred through DirectLink is recognized by the HTTP_REFERER information sent by the browser. It is the address of the page (if any) which referred the browser to the destination page. In short, when visitor clicks on a link on affiliates page, the HTTP_REFERER will be address of affiliates page. 

Our system will then check this page in our database, finds that the page belongs to some affiliate, and assigns him the referral (and click).

This method is dependent on browser, so it is reliable on 90-99%. All the modern browsers send this information, and with the advantages mentioned below you can use it as your main linking method. 

How to use it

To use DirectLinking, your affiliates have to set up their DirectLink URLs. These are URL addresses of YOUR AFFILIATES OWN pages, where they'll place their affiliate links or banners. They can be defined in the Banners & Links -> DirectLinks URLs section. 

This will open DirectLink URL manager.

Your affiliates can enter URLs of their websites using the Add url button. All URLs have to be manually reviewed and approved by merchant before they will be active. 

When URL is approved, every link to our site (even without affiliate parameters) from that page will be treated as affiliates referral.

You can use non-direct link tracking with DirectLink allowed together (checkbox checked - Affiliate linkgin method - Support DirectLink linking).
When button/link is clicked and tracking parameters are present in the banner, those are used for tracking, they are superior to DirectLink method and campaign is assigned according to banner parameters.