About 2 1/2 years ago GPWA member Ash Ketchum ask what type of affiliate links folks used: follow or no-follow?. The response was universal - everyone used no-follow links.
In addition, many folks in that thread also noted that they use target-"_blank" and it was also pointed out, that from a security perspective, rel="nofollow noopener" should be specified when that is done to improve security.
For this week's poll I thought I would follow-up further on that discussion regarding affiliate links and ask how folks handle their affiliate links.
Please vote in the poll so folks can get a sense of general practices followed. But, beyond that, please post explaining the practices you follow with affiliate links.
Let me share our practices:
First, we never link directly to an affiliate site. The first step is always a rel=nofollow link to an internal page on our site where that link is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt exclusion. The second step is to record the click so we know where traffic is being sent, and only then do we redirect the user to the target site in a new window.
The process we follow is actually a bit more sophisticated than what I outlined above. We also consider the ip address of the person clicking the link, and may decide to serve them alternate content if the site does not accept players from the location implied by their ip address, or if there are regulatory reasons we should prohibit the player from visiting the target website entirely. We also consider whether or not we consider the target site to be rogue, although in that case we are obviously not talking about an affiliate link. Then we suggest other sites that might be a better and more reputable place to play.
Michael