Impact of Microsoft IE8 and Google Chrome on LinkShare Tracking
Thanks for visiting the Affiliate Tip blog. Subscribe to my RSS feed or enter your e-mail on the top left to get updates by e-mail.
I was reading the latest LinkShare newsletter, and was interested to see what the had to say about the effectiveness of their affiliate tracking on two new Web browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 8 and Google Chrome.
Both browsers have privacy protections, which are good for the consumer, but can be bad for affiliates.
Browser privacy settings can result in blocking affiliate cookies, which can be devastating if such functionality becomes commonplace.
Not that this is a new issue, as anti-spyware and anti-virus programs often delete affiliate cookies, and some users manually delete them.
Anyhow, in the case of LinkShare, their tracking does not rely on cookies. LinkShare offers two methods, LS Trans and Web Services.
With the LS Trans method, transaction information is sent via a secure and reliable patented batch process. With Web services, tracking transaction information is sent over a secure server-to-server transmission. In both methods there is direct communication between the Advertiser and LinkShare, and the web browser does not present an additional potential point of failure.
That’s reassuring, and hopefully other affiliate networks are testing with these browsers, too.
- Posted in Affiliate News, Affiliate Resources
8 Comments
-
On October 2 @ 12:04 pm posted[...] Impact of Microsoft IE8 and Google Chrome on LinkShare Tracking [...]
LS does not reply on LS cookies to track, however they do rely on advertiser cookies to track. In other words, the advertiser must set cookies that track the LS referred customer and then the advertiser batches that data via web services or file transfer (LS Tran) back to LS.
reply to this commentExactly what Todd said.
reply to this commentWow – comments from both of the Todd's. This is like the the two Corey's from the 80s movies.
I recall a famous old thread on ABW about tracking, but can't seem to find it.
reply to this commentTodds always agree with each other.
That famous thread is probably archived it's so old. The main point of it was summarized in my brief post above.
I just want everyone to understand that there is no reliable way to track referred traffic to a conversion without the use of cookies. Anytime you hear “cookieless tracking” you should look a little deeper – cause it either ain't true or it is not a reliable way to track.
reply to this commentNot even when the tracking is based on referring domains?
reply to this commentTracking solely by referring domain is less accurate than tracking by cookies. Browsers to not reliably pass the referring URL.
reply to this commentTracking solely by referring domain is less accurate than tracking by cookies. Browsers do not reliably pass the referring URL.
reply to this comment