Can someone please explain link hijacking to me?

One thing I forgot to ask....

If my clicks are registering on Amazon but no one is buying, wouldn't that indicate that my links are working fine and no being hijacked?

The way I understand it, link hijacking of affiliate links is software (usually browser toolbars) that systematically changes any affiliate links and/or cookies to the hijacker's own affiliate code, so that even if the site visitor goes through someone's legitimate affiliate link to buy a product, the legitimate affiliate won't get a commission and the hijacker will instead. I'm not sure how the mechanics of it work, but it's one of the obnoxious and unfair practices that has far-reaching implications in the affiliate marketing industry. Another term for these people/corporations is affiliate parasites. It's even done by some companies that you've probably heard of, like EBates. If someone finds a product through an affiliate's site, then clicks through to buy the product, it's only fair that that affiliate should get the commission, right? But what these browser toolbars do is automatically change the code to their own before (or perhaps during) the visit to the final product site. Since the way affiliate marketing works is that the last referrer overwrites previous referrers and gets the commission, the software can pretty much overwrite any and all products that it has an affiliation with. In the case of EBates, which people have to install on their computers, there are huge numbers of products in their database so EBates will hijack a lot of links.

As for your second question, if the number of clicks that Amazon registers matches your website's analytics, you're probably not getting hijacked. When your aff code is hijacked and replaced, there won't be any record of that click referred by you anymore. It's not as if the impression still shows under your aff code but somehow the sale itself is hijacked. As far as I know, it's all or nothing.

Hi Ben,
I'm an affiliate of an adult toy products (sextoyfun) and noticed nothing I was doing would ever generate traffic (no traffic...no sales).

End of March 2012, I went online and had a sitemap pulled to download to google and bing - when I did, I found something VERY interesting... is seems my links are being hijacked by the company itself (which is why I am here... to find out how many other affiliates are having the same issue)

The software I used to download my url links only goes to 50,000 but even of those over 1/5th do not have my affiliate code, they have sextoyfun code...INCLUDING my landing page.

I don't stand a chance - no wonder nothing registers for traffic - my traffic has been hijacked, hasn't it??

Looking at 50,000 links it would not have been noticeable that almost 13,000 of them had a different code than mine had I not stumbled upon it by accident.

so as it is today... what it seems is that the links being indexed do not have my affiliate code... it has the company affiliate code.

So when a customer lands on that link... although it appears to be my website it is not my code rather the company's code.

and when a customer enters my site with a code that is not my own... every link that is clicked from there on... is hijacked.

I brought it to the attention of sextoyfun but they have yet to do anything about it.

I also showed them how even the mobile translation was being hijacked which is much more noticeable because it actually SHOWS their banner and not mine but still nothing has been done.

So what do you do when a company is hijacking their own affiliates url links?

Isn't this fraud??