Ever catch sponsors redirecting galleries?

[Alphawolf]

In going through all the sponsors I had joined the last couple days I picked up some more Daily Hosted Gallery links.

If there are a lot of them- I don't usually look except sporadically.

I caught 2 sponsors that were redirecting to a pure promotional page rather than the a Daily Gallery straight from the Daily Gallery link code they gave for one of their sites.

One sponsor had 2 of their Daily galleries going to some ad page they made instead of the gallery.

This makes the site that links to the supposed gallery look really bad. |pissed|

The surfer will lose trust in our site thinking it's our fault and cause hesitation to click on more links...or they'll just get pissed and leave.

Wonderin' if anyone else caught sponsors doing this?

[HarryM]

I found that aswell on a normal hosted gallery, even checked if I copied it properly and i did but it just redirects to the home page

[Tommy]

I found one redirecting to their tgp

[chilihost]

who is it?

maybe they have some sort of geo-targeting script in place that diverts non-productive traffic...I recall seeing this as a t&c for using hosted galleries for some of the larger programs in the past.

cheers,
Luke

[Alphawolf]

Rather not say who it is so long as they don't do it often.

Actually, I only recall 1 and forgot which other sponsor it was.

Don't think it's geotargetting...

I clicked the link right off their site from the webmaster area and I'm in New York.

[chilihost]

fair enough, it may just be a mistake with a 404 directive kicking in. I found this once on a different sponsor and informed them and they took care of it within a day.

cheers,
Luke

[Alphawolf]

Actually, in clicking through the links I found which one it was. Forgot the other sponsor.

I'll go shoot them an e-mail or hop onto their message board if they have one.

[bret]

what scares me is that this bothered you enough to hop over to gg&j and make a post about it... but not enough to remember what sponsor was doing it...

[Alphawolf]

I was going through appx 100 sponsors combing through them to see who had hosted galleries and copying and pasting links hours at a time.

Anyways, I contacted the sponsor via e-mail and he replied back that he fixed it within 12 hours.

Indeed- the gallery now goes to a gallery.

So, have no fear- I am the Hosted gallery police.

[bret]

good deal.

a sponsor intentionally re-directing a hosted gallery would be really bad practice. once word got out, few, if any webmasters with any decent amount of traffic would ever use their galleries... and the small amount a sponsor could bring in with these tactics would never cover the resources consumed in creation and maintenance. any sponsor caught doing this on a regular basis, is simply cutting their own throat.

[sexVip]

I have never seen this

[whitey]

Tempe Cash galleries redirected to a tgp on and off for awhile. A couple of us caught them and several weeks later they were gone.

It does happen from time to time, and it is rarel inadvertant. If the galleries are 404 for some reason, they should redirect to a normal 404 page. Anywhere else, they wrote to code to redirect them there.

[Surfn]

Originally posted by whitey
If the galleries are 404 for some reason, they should redirect to a normal 404 page. Anywhere else, they wrote to code to redirect them there.

Exactly!

[bret]

Originally posted by Surfn
Exactly!

not really... they could have the 404 on their hosted gallery server/directory/site what-have-you, redirect to any page of their choosing, which could be a TGP they run.

if a gallery url is incorrectly typed, or if some surfer tries to be "sneaky" and get "extra content" they make an attempt to steal the surfer and push them through their tgp.

pushing the surfer through a tgp they operate is a pretty good strategy, sending them off to a pay-site there is a good chance they will lose the surfer... but since the surfer is already looking at tgp sites, they might not notice/care... etc.

[Surfn]

bret

I don't send surfers to sponsors to be redirected somewhere else. If they can't sell them send them back to me! I'll send them to a different sponsor.

If I catch a sponsor doing that I would terminate my account immediately!

[bret]

so let me get this straight...

if you enter an incorrect hosted gallery url and they re-direct your surfer to their tgp

OR

if you send your surfer to a legit url and the surfer starts fucking with the url to try and gain access to some "bonus content" and the sponsor redirects the surfer to a tgp or the like

you would stop using that sponsor?

if you really stand by that, then i want you to take down all of your 404 pages, beause if i send you traffic, i dont want you "stealing" it from me when the surfer acts like a surfer or if i am to stupid to link to your page properly, i dont deserve the traffic anyway.

you do whatever it takes to keep surfers on your site (in an attempt to make money off them) why shouldn't you allow a sponsor the same freedom?

[Surfn]

Originally posted by bret
so let me get this straight...

if you enter an incorrect hosted gallery url and they re-direct your surfer to their tgp

OR

if you send your surfer to a legit url and the surfer starts fucking with the url to try and gain access to some "bonus content" and the sponsor redirects the surfer to a tgp or the like

you would stop using that sponsor?

if you really stand by that, then i want you to take down all of your 404 pages, beause if i send you traffic, i dont want you "stealing" it from me when the surfer acts like a surfer or if i am to stupid to link to your page properly, i dont deserve the traffic anyway.

you do whatever it takes to keep surfers on your site (in an attempt to make money off them) why shouldn't you allow a sponsor the same freedom?

No, you don't get it.

[bret]

way to clear that up...

[whitey]

Bret:

We were talking about sponsor galleries redirecting - which is cheating.

If I found one gallery redirecting to a page without my code included, they are gone.

The sponsor has many technical choices to deal with this. If they don't know how, they should not be in the biz of offering an affiliate program, paticularly with hosted sites or galleries.

99 % of the sponsors I use have figured it out. When I find the ones who have not, they are either dishonest or stupid.

Last I looked at the thread, we talking about neither mistyped urls nor surfer typing of urls.

Heh, most of the link lists will ban you for redirecting - whatever the reason. So, most webmasters put normal 404's in their error htaccess in order to cover any mistake they might make in their links or uploading a site or gallery. I guess you are advocating holding sponsors to a much lower standard.

[bret]

i am not advocating anything...

if a sponsor redirects a VALID url, that is cheating. and you have every right not to use a sponsor using such tactics.

but they can do whatever the fuck they want with 404 errors, it is really none of anyones business what they do with traffic that does not have a valid destionation.

you said if the 404 re-directs they coded it taht way, while that is technically correct (i dont see how you can have a 404 redirecting or not, without coding it)
it was not what you were trying to say, you were saying if a sponsor gallery re-directs they are cheating. i was just pointing out that this is not always the case.

that was my point.

[Alphawolf]

In this case the gallery URL went to:
www.sponsorsdomain/console/console-multi.html

[whitey]

Actually Bret...

I am also referring to error codes.

404's can take place for more reasons than you stated. A sponsor's staffer may fuck up an upload or a variety of such events. If they are 404ing a valid gallery link and not carrying forward my id, they are technically cheating, particularly since that event is so easy to solve. All you have to do is carry forward the id into the 404 page via whatever include the sponsor is using. No affiliate id, no include, which would cover the bases for everyone.

Bottom line, if they redirect a gallery without my id, they are cheating, whether the 404 is inadvertant or not.

[SmithsMedia]

I got really pissed the other day when I found the sponsor was putting more effort into marketing their afiliate programes rather then selling the memberships to their site.

I figured I can only make my point by not using em but that really takes the piss. They should at least give WM's a fighting chance of getting the sale :-(

[urb]

IMO if you are suspicious about anything (and God knows I get a little paranoid now and then), send the sponsor an email explaining the problem you are having. Usually there is a perfectly rational explaination.

If they don't respond, or you feel you are being taken for a ride, just don't send them any traffic again.

Don't get angry, get the next sponsor in place of them and get some software that checks for redirects.