• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Affiliate Marketing / How Affiliate Merchants Can Opt Out of the Bit.ly & Viglink Cookie Dropping

How Affiliate Merchants Can Opt Out of the Bit.ly & Viglink Cookie Dropping

May 7, 2015 at 4:53 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

opt out bitlyYesterday we reported that Bit.ly and Viglink were adding their own affiliate cookies to links that are shortened through the URL shortener Bit.ly.  And understandably, people are pretty upset about it, not just for the cookie dropping on unsuspecting users, but also because of the high likelihood that affiliate commissions could be hijacked when anyone uses a Bit.ly link.

First, this IS retroactive, so old affiliate links are being affected, it isn’t simply newly created links this is happening to.

If you are a merchant, you can contact your account rep at Viglink to opt out.  “Then, ‘in theory’, none of the links will go through the affiliate channel,” said one affiliate, who prefers to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, and who has done exactly this.

However, if you do this, you will still need to keep an eye on it, because Viglink can make “mistakes” and forget from time to time, according to the affiliate.

“We theoretically opted out,” says the affiliate, “but found a bit.ly link our social team used redirecting through the affiliate channel.”

So bottom line, you can opt out by contacting your rep, but you will need to be super vigilant that Viglink doesn’t somehow forget or lose the opt-out and you discover commissions have been hijacked by Bit.ly.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates - August 1, 2022
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing, Tools

Sign up for our newsletter


Comments

  1. Joseph Samuel says

    May 12, 2015 at 10:03 pm

    I’ve been using Viglink for a long time and over the last few months, it has been a terrible experience. My clicks have been underreported immensely (& yes, these are the clicks that Viglink shortens through Bitly). Additionally, Viglink has been having these “monthly updates” where they re-report the revenue for the month. For April, my revenue ended up dropping by more than 50% (the previous months were also terrible). Prior to all of this seemingly shady business, my return rate was around 10-15%. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Bitly deal. Can Bitly be taking credit for the clicks my blog drives?

    I’ve previously caught incorrect reporting of revenue (meaning, purchases not being reported) but Viglink just sends it off to be “checked” by Linkshare and that takes months so by the time they get an “answer” (and the answer is always an ambitious sentence with zero meaning), you’ve already caught so many other inaccuracies that you have forgotten what the “answer” is even for. My blog is my full time job right now and Viglink is completely letting me down. These past few months have been devastating. When is the FTC going to start creating strong regulations for affiliate marketing? Right now, the big winners are the merchants, Linkshare, and Viglink. The losers are the publishers (aka us), because we are completely blinded and have zero control as to what is going on behind the scenes. There is ZERO transparency.

    I really believe all the big players are being incredibly short sited. Once you alienate the publishers, the publishers will move to other businesses or even start selling their own products directly to their followers. The merchants whose businesses have been thriving off of affiliate marketing will go downhill and then so will these affiliate companies (Viglink, Skimlink, Linkshare, RStyle).

Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2052)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates

We finally have the first Google Quality Rater Guidelines update of 2022, and like usual, it is … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • 2022 Update for Google Quality Rater Guidelines – Big YMYL Updates
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
March 2023
MTWTFSS
« Aug  
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031 

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in