Direct link tracking

Direct Link tracking is the most advanced, SEO-friendly tracking tool available on the affiliate software market. TrackGecko implements this unique tracking, even in the low-cost Xpress Edition.

HOW IT WORKS

The 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 a visitor clicks a link on the affiliate’s page, the HTTP_REFERER will be the address of affiliate’s page.

Our system will then check this page in our database to learn if the page belongs to an affiliate, and it will then assign that person the referral (and click).

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

ADVANTAGES OF DIRECT LINKS

Visitors won’t know they are clicking on an affiliate link.

Many people are not so keen on clicking a link that they recognize as an affiliate link. If your affiliates use affiliate links in their blog or review site, visitors will know that they earn commissions for the promoted products, and they will be more skeptical of clicking on a link or believing the review. If you’ll use DirectLinks no one will know that the links are promoting your products.

Visitors will not damage or remove the affiliate parameters from the URL.

There are people who don’t like to purchase through affiliate links, even if there are no disadvantages to them. Those people would rather copy the URL to their browser and remove the affiliate parameters.

Your affiliates can prevent this problem by using the affiliate link cloaker; but if they use DirectLinks, they won’t need to worry about anything at all.

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