IFraming an Offer with Tracking202 on the first Page
Here is the correct code to use for iframing an offer with Tracking202. The Prosper202 self-hosted version will be slightly different, but its the exact same idea. Place the Javascript at the end, and have the iframe src set to the landing page outbound link, not the php redirect code.
<html>
<head>
<title>Title Goes Here</title>
</head>
<body style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" scroll="no">
<iframe src="http://redirect.tracking202.com/lp/XXXXXX" style="border: 0px; width: 100%; height:100%;"></iframe>
<script src="http://static.tracking202.com/lp/XXXXXX/landing.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</body>
</html>
Blackhat: Using hidden content on your landing page
Because iframes are simply iframing another site, they generally never have any acutal content the search engine spiders can pickup. But there is a way, if you use a hidden div element, you can place text inside the hidden but because the div css is styled to not display: readers on the website won't be able to read the text although the text is there for the crawlers to pickup. This is good if you want to stuff your landing page with content that wil help you achieve a higher qualitly score when the spiders come your way. Below is an example, we have bolded the div to make it easier to see.
<html>
<head>
<title>Title Goes Here</title>
</head>
<body style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" scroll="no">
<div style="display: none;">None of my text inside this hidden div can be seen here can be seen.</div>
<iframe src="http://redirect.tracking202.com/lp/XXXXXX" style="border: 0px; width: 100%; height:100%;"></iframe>
<script src="http://static.tracking202.com/lp/XXXXXX/landing.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</body>
</html>
Using an Iframe on the 2nd page, instead of redirecting through the affiliate link
Sometimes you may just want a regular landing page as the first page the visitor sees, but then instead of having a link that redirects out to the offer destination url, you instead want the 2nd page to just be an iframe of the offer. So in this aspect the visitor never actually leaves your domain. They land on the first page, which is a regular page that tries to make them click through and then instead when they click through to redirect them to the offer, you instead have a page that iframes the offer. This makes it look like the user is still on your page. Below I will show you how to do this.
The basic concept is acutally quite simple; instead of redirecting to the affiliate url, we are now just going to have an iframe and paste the affiliate url as the IFRAME SRC. You can do this by modifing the simple or advance landing page PHP REDIRECT code by using the example below. All that is happening is instead of using the previous header() command which redirects the user, we now echo (which prints to HTML) the url in the IFRAME SRC. See below:
<?php
//$tracking202outbound is where the user is suppose to be redirected to
if (isset($_COOKIE['tracking202outbound'])) {
$tracking202outbound = $_COOKIE['tracking202outbound'];
} else {
$tracking202outbound = 'http://redirect.tracking202.com/lp/xxxxx';
}
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Title Goes Here</title>
</head>
<body style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" scroll="no">
<iframe src="<? echo $tracking202outbound; ?>"
style="border: 0px; width: 100%; height:100%;"></iframe>
</body>
</html>
Jamie on Jun 25, 2008 at 7:51pm
Does the technique using <div style="display: none;"> to hide content really work to improve the quality score for Adwords? It just seems so easy for Google to see this.
Wes Mahler on Jun 25, 2008 at 9:13pm
Although I can't say absolutely for sure, I'm sure it does help, I always generally include it though. I don't think it could really hurt you, it'd be crazy for them to penalize for any references to display: none, there are all types of ways to hide the content in other ways of display: none.
Jamie on Jun 27, 2008 at 1:05pm
Hmm. I just received a note that Google is banning my friend's site for hiding text. He used #seo { height: 1px; overflow: hidden; } in his stylesheet. How is this different than <div style="display: none;"> ? How can hiding text to improve the quality score still work?
Here's the message from Google:
My
Dear site owner or webmaster of foo.com,
While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that were outside our quality guidelines, which can be found here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html <http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html>
In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, we have temporarily removed some webpages from our search results. Currently pages from foo.com are scheduled to be removed for at least 30 days.
Specifically, we detected the following practices on your webpages:
* The following hidden text on foo.com:
e.g.
fooword1, fooword2, etc.
[...]
We would prefer to have your pages in Google's index. If you wish to be reconsidered, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When you are ready, please visit:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reinclusion?hl=en
to learn more and request a reconsideration request.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team
Wes Mahler on Jun 28, 2008 at 1:06am
Well either way you do it it's still hiding text, the reason it can improve the QS is because you can put more rich content, that is related to the keyword your trying to get a good QS on.
It sounds like the website was removed more so, for SEO, was that for PPC? At any rate sure, if your caught doing it by someone manually or automatically at google they'll probably ding you.
Sell Porn Make Money on Jul 10, 2008 at 8:48am
Looks like google banned the site from organic, but paid would still be available and I think this solution is better for PPC anyway. Thats just my minimum bid of .05 cents :)
Rafael on Jul 10, 2008 at 9:15am
I have been looking for a good way to do direct linking on Adwords/Yahoo/Facebook so I can quickly test offers and see if it´s worth my time and money to design a proper landing page.
For some reason I have never been able to get a direct linking campaign going for more than a day. I usually do a redirect from my domain to the offer landing page.
Any pointers on how to successfully start a direct linking campaign?
Wes Mahler on Jul 10, 2008 at 5:02pm
Try turning off cloaking on the direct link campaigns, and increase bid to see if you get traffic. Check to make sure your ads/keywords aren't disapproved because of QS issues.
Dave Trebas on Jul 21, 2008 at 5:40pm
The other way is to use an img tag with the source the affiliate link and set the image size something like 1 px by 1 px -
I don't know if this works - read it on a forum somewhere
Eric on Aug 11, 2008 at 2:26am
Wes, what's the reason you're suggesting to turn off cloaking on direct link campaigns? Thanks
Wes Mahler on Aug 11, 2008 at 9:08am
Because the PPC engines have a hard time following through the 2 cloaked redirects, and it can give you a really bad QS.
Eric on Aug 12, 2008 at 2:08am
Hm, I also already thought about that. If cloaking is turned off, will e.g. {OVRAW}/{OVKEY} data in case of YSM be passed to the offer page?
My understanding is, without cloaking the following happens:
YSM --(OVRAW)--> T202 --(SubID)--> Offer
So my keywords are safe. Is that correct? If so, how would the scheme look with cloaking on? And what's the benefit if keywords already won't be passed with cloaking off?
Wes Mahler on Aug 13, 2008 at 12:31am
Yes, if cloaking is turned OFF, the OVRAW AND OVKEY will be passed to the offer page.
How would it look with cloaking on, it'd look like this
YSM >> T202 (cloaked redirect) >> OFFER, (where offer can't see your referer)
instead of
YSM >> T202 (non-cloaked-redirect >> OFFER, (where offer can see your referer)
--
"whats the benefit with keywords if keyword won't be passed with cloaking off," well thats the thing, if the cloaking is off the keywords Will Be Passed.
So the only benefit to turning off cloaking is it is extremely fast, and legimate, but the advertisers can see all your keywords. Turning on cloaking can mess up direct linking, if you turn it off, you can normally direct link alot better.
Eric on Aug 13, 2008 at 9:31am
Thanks for explaining this.
What I really don't get is why T202 passes OVRAW and OVKEY to the advertiser. My understanding is that the advertiser sees T202 as referer. And as referer you can decide what GET values to pass to the advertiser. Am I somehow wrong?
Wes Mahler on Aug 13, 2008 at 3:22pm
Well regardless if you have T202 or not, OVRAW and OVKEY are passed wherever your sending the traffic. Yahoo adds OVRAW and OVKEY to whatever destination url you give it, so regardless it is always passed.
"And as referer you can decide what GET values to pass to the advertiser. " If you are cloaking the referer, and controlling the referer to decide what you want to pass, like using the script above, yes you can change it so it won't show it.
Eric on Aug 14, 2008 at 8:48am
Yeah, I'm aware of that. But since I'm providing my T202 link to Yahoo, OVKEY will be passed to the T202 domain and then hopefully get lost when being redirected to the merchant.
But basically it depends on how T202 is redirecting. If you redirect using a 301 then variables will get passed. PHP redirect I'm not sure and a meta refresh shouldn't pass the variables. So how does T202 redirect when cloaking is of?
Wes Mahler on Aug 14, 2008 at 1:05pm
Ah yes, your right Eric.
If you a direct linking then with cloaking off, they may not be able to see the OVRAW OVKEY, as it may be lost on the redirect.tracking202.com portion of the redirection, which they won't be able to see. But, they will be able to see the REFERERING SOURCE which will reveal the keywords anyways.
So maybe the won't see the OVRAW and OVKEY with Cloaking OFF, but they will be able to see the REFERERing traffic source which is just as bad if not worse.
Eric on Aug 15, 2008 at 4:35am
Ok, to make it sure I've done the following: Searched on G for the string "show my ip referer" and clicked on the mobilefish.com link. it shows me the following referer: http://www.google.com/search?q=show+my+ip+referer
Then I created a test campaign on T202 with http://www.mobilefish.com/services/ipaddress_information/ipaddress_information.php?testvar= as aff link. When I click on the generated test link (adding a sub id) I get an empty referer on mobilefish.com. Looks good to me.. and yes, cloaking was off!
Wes Mahler on Aug 15, 2008 at 9:04pm
When you tested it, did you just PASTE the url in the ADDRESS BAR? or did you put the link on a site, and click through the hyperlink?
Because if it is pasted into the URL it won't show the referer, but it probably will if you hyperlink it from another page.
Eric on Aug 18, 2008 at 1:09am
Good point, I paste the url to the address bar. You're right, it shows the referer when cloaking is off. So I asume T202 doesn't redirect using meta refresh? It's a pity.
Wes Mahler on Aug 18, 2008 at 4:40pm
At least you found it, yes your right. Meta-Refresh doesn't work on INTERNET EXPLORER, that is why we use the above code, a FORM SUBMIT request called by JS instead. Although if you use this method test it out first to make sure it works, we actually use the above method, (followed by an additional 2nd redirect, which is a meta-refresh/backup javascript redirect as well)
Taz on Aug 20, 2008 at 9:39am
Just saw this site through alexa. I was looking into LP Gen. Do I need to buy LP GEN or should i leave it and just use your scripts will do the same job.
I already have Extreme conversions and speedppc. Please let me know.
Many thanks
Tee
Steven on Aug 20, 2008 at 12:11pm
Hi Tee,
We're a PPC analytics tracking software and we also provide scripts to help you in tracking. It's different than the service LPGen provides. LPGen doesn't do tracking, what they do is sell LP templates that help your QS. Two totally different tools. I hope that helps. Tracking is crucial as it is the backbone of everything else.