You’ve done searches on Google where you’ve seen an affiliate link come up on top instead of the merchant’s direct link that should be there, right? Typically that happens when the affiliate is using a 302 (temporary) instead of a 301 (permanent) redirect.

eBay Partner Network just warned their affiliates today that 302 redirects are against the TOS and will no longer be allowed. They are giving affiliates until June 8th 2010 to change out their links. After that date they say “we will treat this issue as an intentional breach of our terms and conditions and any affiliate exhibiting this behavior will be expired.” So get busy, and get those links fixed!

Using 301 redirects rather than 302

Many of our affiliates use a redirection page to help collect statistics on their click through to eBay. In these cases, when a user clicks on a link on the affiliate site, they are taken to a URL (redirection page) that logs the click through and then redirects them to an eBay page by using a 302 HTTP return code. The search engine crawler indexes the content it finds at the end of the temporary redirect (the eBay page) to the redirection URL. Therefore, when a user searches for content from the eBay page, the search engine results will contain matches to the redirection URL that link directly to eBay. This type of redirection is not compliant with our terms and conditions. A solution to this problem is to use permanent redirects, i.e. 301 return codes instead of 302. This will ensure that all the content on the destination page after the redirect is indexed to that page only.

If you are currently using a 302 redirect in a method similar to the one described above, please inform us by emailing CS and make the appropriate changes immediately. From June 8th 2010, we will treat this issue as an intentional breach of our terms and conditions and any affiliate exhibiting this behavior will be expired.

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