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Amazon and Redirects

by vbiz
1 replies
I'm a PHP dev and my client asked me if the Amazon product links that I have built can pass a second parameter instead of simply the product ID and the associate tag. She wants to know what keywords, that we used to pull the products (via Amazon API), were successful or not.

I guessed that there might be 3 avenues to do this:

(a) Don't go straight to Amazon on a product click. Instead, redirect to a PHP page where I can pass extra stuff like seed keyword that put the product on the page in the first place. Then, redirect to the Amazon product. I don't know, however, if Amazon will regard that click. Do they accept redirects? Do they accept temporary or permanent style redirects? (I mean, 301 redirects versus 302.)

(b) Catch the click event bubble with jQuery. Before one goes off to Amazon, capture the click so that it sends an AJAX message back to a PHP page so that I can update a database table with seed keyword, Amazon prod ID, and associate tag ID. Then, release the capture event -- let the event bubble up as it normally would. Trouble is -- I don't know if this is even possible, and if it works in all browsers from IE7 and up, FF (latest), Opera (latest), Chrome (latest), and Safari (latest).

(c) Perhaps there's a way in Amazon reporting where you can pass a secondary parameter and then filter it out in the reports. Do you know of such a case?

What's your opinion on how to handle this?
#amazon #redirects
  • Profile picture of the author Eager2SEO
    Originally Posted by vbiz View Post

    I'm a PHP dev and my client asked me if the Amazon product links that I have built can pass a second parameter instead of simply the product ID and the associate tag. She wants to know what keywords, that we used to pull the products (via Amazon API), were successful or not.

    I guessed that there might be 3 avenues to do this:

    (a) Don't go straight to Amazon on a product click. Instead, redirect to a PHP page where I can pass extra stuff like seed keyword that put the product on the page in the first place. Then, redirect to the Amazon product. I don't know, however, if Amazon will regard that click. Do they accept redirects? Do they accept temporary or permanent style redirects? (I mean, 301 redirects versus 302.)

    (b) Catch the click event bubble with jQuery. Before one goes off to Amazon, capture the click so that it sends an AJAX message back to a PHP page so that I can update a database table with seed keyword, Amazon prod ID, and associate tag ID. Then, release the capture event -- let the event bubble up as it normally would. Trouble is -- I don't know if this is even possible, and if it works in all browsers from IE7 and up, FF (latest), Opera (latest), Chrome (latest), and Safari (latest).

    (c) Perhaps there's a way in Amazon reporting where you can pass a secondary parameter and then filter it out in the reports. Do you know of such a case?

    What's your opinion on how to handle this?
    I track links on some of my Amazon sites with various status codes.

    You want to put a line in your htaccess file that remaps or rewrites URLs to a script.

    My links are in the format:

    hxxp://mysite.com/a/ASIN

    Where a is my status code and ASIN is the 10 digit stock number. (of course you can do what you want)

    In that script you can log anything you want. I record time, IP, page and product.

    Anyone who cloaks links is going to have a redirect, and I've seen it even on the major sites. What about bit.ly and all the other link shorteners? Amazon is going to see it as a link coming from your site. Redirects are an issue when you move a site, Google likes to see 301 redirects so all the link credit gets transferred over to the new site.
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