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I want to implement a system similar to affilite tracking systems like Skimlinks, Viglink, etc. I searched their customer tracking systems. Found some information about tracking systems. I have also searched Analytics systems like Google Analytics, Piwik, OWA. There is a point I need to be guided.

When a user visits my website, clicks a product link of a shopping website like ebay, amazon, etc. I need to track the payment information of my user at the shopping website.

system

I achieved tracking user activity, clicks, etc on my web site with using Analytics's tracking methods (JS tracking). But I cannot find a way how Skimlinks or Viglink tracks user activity(succesful payment of users) in the shopping website which user redirected. (Tracking user activity in the shopping website without using a service from shopping website, without Instant Payment Notification service of PayPay or something else)

I noticed Viglink and Skimlinks redirects user to their server before shopping and adds some additional information (like cookies, URL parameters etc)

Here is an example link to affiliate link of Skimlinks

website : http://www.capoeira-izmir.com/capoeira-kiyafetleri/ link : Street Abada

http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=25227X845172&site=capoeira-izmir.com&xs=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2FHELANCA-POLYAMID-CAPOEIRA-PANTS-ABADA-YOGA-FREE-BONFIM-%2F280678232152%3Fpt%3DUS_CSA_MC_Pants%26hash%3Ditem4159b9f058%23ht_2891wt_1163&xguid=94275a6f74c7ce02bf4739e364d8831c&xcreo=0&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.capoeira-izmir.com%2Fcapoeira-kiyafetleri%2F

It redirects user to go.redirectingat.com first, then a redirection is done to ebay.com/...

I also noticed that it adds an attribute to the url of ebay product link : afsrc=1 I guess it is "affiliate source = 1 " or something like that.

Any guidance or documents about this will be great for me.

Thanks in advance!!

Sinan Goker
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    Impossible to do unless you are able to abuse security flaws in a browser. – ZippyV Jan 24 '12 at 11:14
  • I want to do without abusing any security flaws.But it must be possible with an assumption that I have a change to locate a script code(like[google's asynchronous tracker script](http://code.google.com/intl/tr-TR/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncUsageGuide.html#quickstart) to the shopping website's pages – Sinan Goker Jan 24 '12 at 11:20

1 Answers1

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I think your question is more about how online advertising works rather than technical.

This is a two parts answer.

1. How a conversion tracking works:

In any advertising platform that tracks conversions (any user action that happens in the advertiser property like, in example, a sale) you need to make a request to the advertising platform to notify this.

This is usually done by placing a "Tracking pixel" in the confirmation page the users see after performing the action, commonly known as the "Thank you page".

So the process goes like:

  1. User goes to a website and sees an ad
  2. User clicks the ad
  3. The user's browser goes to the advertising platform (Adwords, Rightmedia, Appnexus, etc) and a cookie is placed in her browser. In this cookie there's a click ID, containing all the relevant information (website that originated the click, time, IP, campaign, etc) and it is redirected to the advertiser's website
  4. The user lands in the advertiser website and "converts" (buys)
  5. The user is redirected to the Thank you page where a "Tracking pixel" is placed, this makes a request to the advertising platform, which reads the cookies in the user's browser and if there's a match, logs the conversion.

Note: The previous example is a Client Side conversion. The same logic could be done in a Server Side request by the advertiser saving the "click id" in step 4 and sending it to the advertising platform in step 5. This is useful when the conversion occurs offline.

For more information: Adwords Conversion tracking: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722054?hl=en

2. How I assume VigLink works

I noticed that many of the products VigLink tracks are from ClickBank, since this is the one I'm more used to, I will write the answer using this example.

You first need to be aware that VigLink is an "affiliate" of Clickbank. As such, it has a report of every sale made by users they referred. They, as affiliates, also have the chance to pass extra information in each click as a TID parameter. This TID sent as a URL parameter in the click will be shown in the sales report.

When a user clicks on a link to a clickbank product using VigLink. VigLink attaches their affiliate link to this same product and a unique TID. I assume this TID matches an ID in their database containing the information of the VigLink website who referred the click.

If the user buys the product, VigLink will see in their ClickBank report (I assume via the ClickBank API) the product bought and the TID, and so on they will know in which website the sale was originated.

Short answer: VigLink is not tracking user actions in the advertiser's website. They are just matching click IDs between their click tracker and the advertiser's reports.

Diego Gonzalez Marignac
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