Directing players to wherever you want them to go?

[PaulEchere]

Didn't know how to summarize it well in the title, but I guess that is somewhat accurate.

I've seen other affiliates often doing this: when there is a brand they are no longer working with for whatever reason they simply redirect all the CTA buttons to a different brand w/o notifying users.

I personally would find it quite annoying as a website visitor, but seeing how often this is used, I am starting to question whether there is ay utility in doing so?
Has anyone been doing this and if so, does it actually work - do players (at least some of them) stick with the brand where you are referring them to instead?

[chaumi]

Not an answer, no experience. But why would anyone redirect. Surely changing the CTA text (and the link) would be the way to do it (other than a short term/temporary fast-fix maybe).

[gm2891]

I try to follow the golden rule: treat others the way you want be treated. And would never send visitors to a casino they don't expect to land on. My site visitors often come back to the site which means reputation for me is important. Image you're shopping online for trainers and after clicking the BUY button you get offered a pair of old wellies. After such you would never ever come back to this site even if it ranks #1.

[wonderpunter]

Brands do it a lot when they restrict certain countries, if the program is bad.. why woudl you want to keep sending them players? or should you take it as a loss?

[Mattbar]

We put notices up that the brands are closed or not recommended, or whatever, which then direct users to relevant sections of the site for other listings or bonuses.

As gm2891 says I personally do not like it when you click a button and are redirected to something different so I don't do that to our users either.

It is important to try to direct the traffic to the places you want to send them but you don't have to be covert about it.

[universal4]

While I agree with others that rewriting the pages, and changing the calls to action etc is the more ideal method, some times that is not the easiest to do.

Brands do it a lot when they restrict certain countries, if the program is bad.. why woudl you want to keep sending them players? or should you take it as a loss?

This is my main motivation to just change the visit links until there is more time to get back to rewriting, making statements about not promoting a brand, changing the calls to action in some way to show why a visitor should choose a different brand than the review or page might be promoting etc.

If you are limited on time and casino x closes, or stops paying, goes rogue etc, why send a visitor there, when a 10 second change of a visit link will now send the visitor to casino y.

If you send the visitor to casino x, you are not gonna get paid or get credit anyway, or you may be sending a visitor to a 404, at least if you send them to casino y it isn't a 404 and there is a tiny chance you can still get a conversion, sure a lower %, but still higher then 0%.

Rick
Universal4

[MJM]

I used to be guilty of this - if we didn't work with a progrma but reviewed them anyways we'd use a favored program in the visit link instead, I stopped because it is honestly deceptive and was short sighted thinking, now I do what Matt said above. I'll also add even though some of those brand pages got good traffic, we never noticed an uptick in signups as a result - so users clearly didn't like it and weren't "tricked" into signing up for the preferred program anyways.

Use the opportunity to build trust - be transparent that you don't work with the brand and can't reccomemd them (but don't call them "rogue" or "blacklisted" just because they don't pay you for referrals either), suggest something else - use it as an SEO opportunity to drop a nice link to another preferred brand page. That's my .02

[Pokerface]

I like the straight forward "This casino is not recommended ... try one of these". Gives players an option and also lets the brand that you are not recommending a message.

[PROFRBcom]

I like the straight forward "This casino is not recommended ... try one of these". Gives players an option and also lets the brand that you are not recommending a message.

This is how we approach the problem.

We state that the casino, poker site, sports book in question not something we would use ourselves, so we certainly do not recommend it to our readers.

Here is a list of other sites you might like instead: x, y, z