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Dropping a Cookie

by sarahstaar
5 replies
I have always used the code below to drop an affiliate cookie for my adwords programs


<IMG height=1 src="http://xxx.forexbro.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=xxx"
width=1>

However when i put this code on some sites that had quite good traffic from Google i noticed after about two weeks my traffic dried up and my Google Ranking dropped off.

This has happened to 3 of my sites... Should i be using PHP ?????
#cookie #dropping
  • Profile picture of the author Neil Morgan
    Hi Sarah

    Maybe I'm wrong with this but I wouldn't use that method.

    The reason is that cookies need to be sent in the HTTP header before any page content is sent.

    Including it in an img tag goes against that so I'm not really surprised that it's not working.

    I know you said it used to work and I won't attempt to explain that - because I can't.

    Regards

    Neil
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  • Profile picture of the author schabotte
    Since you are saying this has affected your google ranking, perhaps google has a filter to penalize that type of affiliate code.

    Or are they newer sites that could have dropped in the sandbox?
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  • Profile picture of the author warriorprocessing
    Google changes it's algorithms all the time. That could account for the drop. Often called Google dance
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  • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
    This is called Cookie Stuffing, and it's against the TOS of most affiliate programs... so use at your own risk if you don't want to get banned...

    I would imagine that Google has been onto cookie stuffing ever since it became a problem, so I have no doubt they have worked with other vendors and have come up with an algorithm that will DROP a sites ranking that is trying to do tricky things like this... Big G isn't stooopid ya know?

    Just my opinion,
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  • Profile picture of the author Simon_Sezs
    Originally Posted by sarahstaar View Post

    I have always used the code below to drop an affiliate cookie for my adwords programs


    <IMG height=1 src="http://xxx.forexbro.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=xxx"
    width=1>

    However when i put this code on some sites that had quite good traffic from Google i noticed after about two weeks my traffic dried up and my Google Ranking dropped off.

    This has happened to 3 of my sites... Should i be using PHP ?????
    I haven't had a problem with my site's PR and I stuff on all of my review sites. Have you changed anything else? I think that warriorprocessing mentioned..google is constantly shuffling and reshuffling pages.

    As far as your <img> stuff, I would probably instead go to a .htaccess stuff or use a .php page.

    Jared makes a good point although most affiliate programs turn a blind eye to this (either because it is too much to police or they are just in it to make money)

    However, cookie stuffing has nothing to do with google as it doesn't affect the content on the page or the user experience (since they don't know it is happening) so I can't imagine it making much of a difference...after all,it isn't like you are cloaking the page with keywords or anything.

    Besides, you could just as easily plop down an invisible iframe onto a .php page and google wouldn't penalize you for this...why think that they would do the same with a <img> tag that goes nowhere?
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