HAVAH HOPE <havah_at_aperfectdealer.com> WROTE:
>I need the following answered by someone who knows
>for sure the answers. They do not appear in the FAQ on
>goto's site about the partner sites.
>If you are listed in one of the top three positions on
>goto.com, your listing is sold to their partners. If
>someone clicks on my listing on one of the partner
>sites does goto.com charge me for that? Will the click
>through register as coming from the partner site or
>goto.com in my logs?
Yes. The partners redirect the clicks to Goto, whose
server records the clicks and then forwards them on to
the advertisers' sites.
I have cc'd you, but I will be traveling for the next
week. I should be able to respond to digest discussion
as it's running 5-7 days behind, but if you request
specific data offlist I won't be able to respond in a
timely fashion.
>I only ask because I am trying to confirm this is why
>my goto.com charges are so much higher than what my log
>software claims is the number of click-throughs I have
>received from goto.com.
The click-throughs SHOULD be coming from Goto, unless
your referer logs are showing the Goto URL as part of
the data for other referers.
Look at this URL from a search on Altavista for "britney
spears posters":
http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/web?q=britney+spears+posters&kl=XX&pg=q
Altavista is disguising its paid listings as "featured
sites". They are only distinguishing the paid sites
from true search results with that one label (and a
label for the actual results which starts out with "We
found about..."
Tonight I'm getting two ads: the first is a text ad from
Double-Click, the second is a listing from Goto. The
Goto link looks like this (please don't click on it, as
this will cost the advertiser 38 cents per click):
http://jump.altavista.com/goto2.go?http://www.goto.com/d/sr?xargs=00u3hs9yoakGVqzTDDhBBGnwQ+9Fqo46HS2QdoVZSg+uBkbglXIIJJG8hxZ9uVFVD24dB2Yzu02bsEyHLBxsT5cC345uvKhXCGtNkriuj8BMutLuDGt5JEN1xxcmBYBJjmiGzl1RknCmId0Zy8FK98/ZPNm0HuTnRpqB4GVHGbz7AZy92xsRHNt7P+3dfToaI92lv6bq99Cj9pfrXViO8E8mS+eYdhtfZ1SgomTJVkfwDcu2CHCcAEoA6t8GC8NnOaqzL/A9old/AuPlCVW3omC611qJXjJv9n4W99333LdUktB2Xe3g==&bid=0.38
Anyone who clicks on that link will invoke a script on
Altavista which counts the click and then sends the surfer
to Goto. Goto's server then counts the click and sends
the surfer to the appropriate site (which in this case is
encrypted).
The same search run at Goto itself gives you these results:
http://www.goto.com/d/search/;$sessionid$1PMOCBIABI223QFIEFVQPUQ?type=home&tm=1&Keywords=britney+spears+posters&Find+It%21.x=35&Find+It%21.y=12
(NOTE: That session ID may invalidate attempts to duplicate
my search with one click)
Here is Goto's actual link (it will not appear as an HTML
link in your reader):
/d/sr?xargs=00u3hs9yoakFWLTzDCxRBNP1B68lzWp%2BDmKaELEUiL97fWkgJU1pIqJu37NJ2ywocwbx%2BPHvN5hPimIR0QQmA05K86O2eCvrQZav6dNkCx03GA6v6tbpoNiGIDVZdqdX1kZa7og5aWpqvkasR3WR%2Fl1NERg8zrz3x2%2Ber0aRQL1edUHHwCITFghx7ATcDK0I0tjlg6%2F7LmlKTy5Q7AVLsipCSWYUsTljvMVKyTxtle3tHd97xsv9Ul6x1uX6%2FEPrFTXKOMkLKLCsjfHM%2F0Pu6XfgG8h4UrXQ%3D%3D
All I can tell you for sure is that, in order for Goto to
bill you, they HAVE to have a record of the click-throughs.
It appears from the way these partner links are created
that the partners are just redirecting surfers to Goto. I
cannot tell you how that will appear in your referer logs.
Michael Martinez
Science Fiction and Fantasy info_at_xenite.org
Visualizing Middle-earth, a book for all Tolkien fans
http://www.xenite.org/
Received on Fri May 25 2001 - 10:08:08 CDT
