Do you have any links that go into detail on this? I was intrigued by your comment and I want to read more about it but ironically I couldn't find anything on Google!
I can't find the paper I read on it either, but I can confirm that it happens anecdotally with Google, and oddly enough AIM Messenger. I've had URLs that have never had an inbound link, and magically GoogleBot rocks up when I show a Chrome user. I'll keep looking for it.
I'm also convinced they use Google Analytics to find new URLs. I've seen URLs that I only had in AJAX calls indexed before (and I fired events to GA on these URLs).
They have expressly denied that in the past. (Where "that" is "using user data for Google Analytics to expand the crawl set". They're also on the record as saying "no use of toolbar data.")
The more likely thing you are experiencing is Google reading your AJAX URLs, either by evaluating JS or by using heuristics. Google is known to do both of these, but a lot of HNers get surprised when I mention it, so FYI.
I once had a spammer hit one of my contact forms a few hundred times on a page set up to capture traffic from South Dakota. there was a corresponding goal set up in Google Analytics that triggered and a week or so later the S Dakota page popped up as a site link on SERPS. Certainly doesn't prove anything but the page got essentially zero traffic and had no external inbound links and wasn't weighted very heavily in term of site architecture. Makes me wonder if there isn't some careful parsing of words in their claims. /removestinfoilhat
People using Chrome with those settings enabled should probably read up on its privacy policy [1]. Its features such as, "use a web service to help resolve navigation errors", "use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs" send data to the default search provider.
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I'm curious as to how Referly is able to link commissions off of Amazon purchases to their users. AFAIK, Amazon doesn't let you do sub-id tracking, only site-wide affiliate tracking (amazon.com/123/?tag=referly-20)
Currently they do not have a solution for this. Luckily it is easy to detect people gaming the system and I believe they handle collisions by hand at the moment. I can only assume this money will help them build a proper solution to this problem.
If you mean by "gaming the system" that people put their own referrer tag in the link, I agree.
But I'd game the system by spamming the whole service and recommend as many products as possible.
To be honest, I don't believe that refer.ly will succeed. It adds a layer of complexity to the end user. If I recommend a product, I just write a simple email to the persom I'm recommending to. If I recommend a product on my website, I just write about it or use affiliate marketing (e. g. my own Amazon tag). What would I need refer.ly for?
A couple years ago, I've seen a startup called loved.by (google it) which was the exact same thing. It seems that the pivoted now to a more generic affiliate marketing platform.
Thanks for mentioning loved.by. I had never heard of them. AFAIK the Referly team started working on the idea about two years ago about when loved.by first debuted.
I think Refer.ly could work if they add enough value to the end user by aggregating every imaginable affiliate service into one and offering some sort of easy to understand and consistent metrics across all of them.
An aggregator could work, but you're at the mercy of the big affiliates from which you need buy-in - and from what it sounds like Amazon isn't playing with them.
All it takes is a cease and desist letter, a la craigslist and padmapper, and you've lost a large portion of your market.
The code to do this is on Github (at least for the UK): https://github.com/fubralimited/php-oara Affiliate network integration is not a technical challenge at all.
I'm also sceptical. It's hard enough to get consumers to understand and bother with the affiliate model when they could earn pounds (http://www.quidco.com/), let alone pennies (refer.ly). I suspect they'll pivot (either towards Shopcade or towards Skimlinks) within 12 months.
Referly strips out other referrer tags, and we use several approaches to handle "gaming". These are issues that every affiliate network faces, but they can be managed.
You'd be surprised at the level of data the affiliate networks make available to the people using them. Even if you are a small affiliate, purchase/basket level data is on offer.
how could they build a business off of guessing if the purchases are made. especially with the 24 hour length of the cookie, it would make it nearly impossible to track if multiple referly users have the same items. they must have some arrangement or something going on that is not clear.
I am also curious as to how they are able to get around Amazon's affiliate agreement.
"You will not offer any person or entity any consideration or incentive (including any money, rebate, discount, points, donation to charity or other organization, or other benefit) for using Special Links (e.g., by implementing any “rewards” or loyalty program that incentivizes persons or entities to visit the Amazon Site via your Special Links)."
They may not be worried about getting around Amazon's TOS.
Purely hypothetical but a potential strategy could be to ignore Amazon's TOS in the early stage and use their breadth of products to entice new users and build critical mass. Soon they get to be big enough that Amazon take's notice and cuts them off. However by that time they have enough momentum and users that they can keep their users happy by offering all the products available through CJ, LinkShare, Share-a-Sale, and their own in house sourced affiliate partners.
