Ahmed Farooq educated me as to why Commission Junction (and any affiliate aggregator) redirects like they do:

1. In windows there is a file called ‘hosts. Its lets you set local DNS rules. These local DNS rules override anything online so what the adblocker companies would do is insert something like tracking.cj.com into the hosts file and block it so all affilliate links for Commission Junction would get nullified. What CJ did to counter this was to buy up 10000 domains and instead of always using the same domain (tracking.cj.com), they used these 10k different domains. Thus making it much, much harder for the adblocker guys to kill the affilate links

2. There are like 10 main CPA networks that do the credit/payday garbage. Often times if an affiliate network does not have an offer themselves, they subcontract it from another affiliate network. So lets say we are both cpa networks, I have a credit repair offer for say $10 and you dont have one … so you sign up under me and offer it to your affiliate sfor $8. Your affiliate uses the xxxxx.com link you give them, which ten goes to my yyyyyyy.com link, which then goes to the proper affiliate site.

Mike

the redirects are standard Commission Junction redirects. Why they do this I’ve never understood…

Yes it is a shame that searches that should be returning a range of customer choices are in fact returning the Authoritative OneBox. Google certainly seems to be setting the standard too low.

Mike

I understand that Google wants to give a OneBox for searches on a business name. But Maps can’t tell the difference between a keyword search and a business name search.

Seems like the easy solution would be to show a OneBox only if the Maps listing matches the #1 organic listing.

Yes, they appear to be quite random. I only checked a few in street view and there didn’t seem to be a business at the location. Perhaps he has lots of cousins.

Mike

This is really interesting. So Mr P Barnett has just randomly chosen addresses to affliate his “business” to?
Wow – some folks just don’t have many scruples do they?

Lucky for us we have the Google watch dogs keeping an eye out for these dastardly devils… oh what? Unionized and not in their contract? Drat… I guess Mike we’re on our own.

J