Name

BounceReferrals — remove visible affiliate code from URLs after first access

SYNOPSIS

No | Yes

DESCRIPTION

When BounceReferrals is enabled, GET requests to URLs with mv_pc or mv_source set to an affiliate code are redirected to the same URL minus the affiliate code.

This keeps search engines that respect redirects from storing the affiliate code-salted URLs in their indexes, and helps them focus on the real resource with a single URL instead of a multitude of salted links.

DIRECTIVE TYPE AND DEFAULT VALUE

Catalog directive

EXAMPLES

Example: Enabling BounceReferrals

BounceReferrals yes

NOTES

When this directive is enabled and visitors do not already have a session cookie (the most common case on first access), they are bounced to an URL that does not have the affiliate code but has the session ID. There's no easy way around this, and we consider it a separate issue from the BounceReferrals concept. If session IDs in URLs are a concern, they'll need a separate solution.

Historically, many application servers always bounced the first request to check for cookie support. Nowadays, many simply require cookies for anything that needs a session. Interchange is different on both counts.

AVAILABILITY

BounceReferrals is available in Interchange versions:

4.6.0-5.9.0 (git-head)

SOURCE

Interchange 5.9.0:

Source: lib/Vend/Config.pm
Line 722

['BounceReferrals',  'yesno',            'no'],

Source: lib/Vend/Config.pm
Line 5434 (context shows lines 5434-5446)

sub parse_yesno {
my($var, $value) = @_;
$_ = $value;
if (m/^y/i || m/^t/i || m/^1/ || m/^on/i) {
  return 1;
}
elsif (m/^n/i || m/^f/i || m/^0/ || m/^of/i) {
  return 0;
}
else {
  config_error("Use 'yes' or 'no' for the $var directive\n");
}
}

AUTHORS

Interchange Development Group

SEE ALSO

DocBook! Interchange!