eBay PartnerNetwork Blog
Using 301 redirects rather than 302
May 11th, 2010
Hi all,
We have noticed recently that the use of temporary redirects (302 redirects) instead of 301 redirects can result in activity that is not compliant with our terms & conditions. We know that often this is unintentional, so we have worked together with a few of our affiliates to identify and prevent the problem. Here is an example to illustrate what can happen:
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.
The eBay Partner Network team
May 11th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
Hi all,
Just to note, this is not a change in policy – we’ve always disallowed this. We’ve written this post as we’ve noticed this issue has become more prevalent recently and we don’t want people to do this accidentally and be unaware of the consequences.
Julia
May 11th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Thanks for this info. I have been thinking to start using redirects. I will now keep clear of 302
Thanks
Paul
May 11th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Thanks for the clarification Julia.
May 11th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Thanks for this. I always like these detailed/technical-minded blog posts.
-h
May 12th, 2010 at 1:04 am
For all of you PHP developers out there. According to a comment on the PHP web site:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.header.php#78470
Using header(”Location: /foo.php”); without any additional parameters defaults to a 302 redirect. Make sure to use:
header(”Location: /foo.php”,TRUE,301);
to explicitly redirect with a 301 redirect.
May 12th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Thats a good tip Jon, worked perfectly for me. Thanks
May 13th, 2010 at 9:18 am
We wanted to address some of the main questions that have come up following this blog post on 302 redirects.
Is this a change in policy?
No, this blog post was to help educate our affiliates on some recent findings we uncovered during one of our routine account reviews. We realize this is a common method used and wanted to address the issue in a timely manner.
So are all 302 redirects banned?
No, not all use of 302 redirects are banned. The example outlined in the blog post was the most commonly used method by our affiliates who were found showing this behavior. As long as your redirect method does not cause the search engine crawler to index the contents of the destination page (eBay Page) to the redirect URL you should be fine.
How do I know my account is impacted by this?
We recommend that everyone re-evaluate their account to ensure they are compliant. However, we are aware of the main publishers that are affected by this issue and we will be contacting them via email to work with them on resolving this.
Will I be expired if my account falls into this bucket after the specified date?
We know that in most cases this is unintentional and that is why we are working with our affiliates to fix it. To help us monitor and prevent this problem from increasing in volume, we set a deadline by when we expect most of our affiliates to update their links. After this date, each case that we find will be carefully evaluated by the team on a case by cases basis, taking into consideration various areas such as the severity of the problem, including the number of links of affected, the level of difficulty in implementing the changes etc. This evaluation will inform the decision whether we choose to make an expiration, although in many cases, we expect we can work with the affiliate to remove the problem .
Julia
May 13th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Thank you Julia for coming back so quickly and addressing some of the main problems