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Previous: Madrid Metro TV screens | Main | Next: Movie ticket
February 24, 2004 01:06 AM
Broken: Redundant Amazon page
Kathleen Balson writes:
I saw the title of a book I might look to buy (on a site - not Amazon), so I clicked on it... And Amazon (being so helpful) dutifully told me that I had clicked on the book... I know I clicked on it, because I clicked on it! It's not like I would forget that I clicked on it...So what do I do next?
I ended up scrolling down (the rest of the page offers some other books I might like to click on, and other unrelated and useless links), then finally clicked on the title to see more about the book. Why does this page exist? I've never encountered it before now. It certainly didn't help me in any way - except for a laugh.
By the way, for those This Is Broken readers living in New Orleans and other places that celebrate the day: Happy Mardi Gras! -mh
Yes, all offsite referral links go to these "foyer" pages. I have no idea why. Bait and switch marketing I guess.
Also, it could be that this page is there simply to give an extra page towards banners and advertisements.
Not all offsite referral links go to those pages. I've clicked offsite referral links that go straight to the regular product description page, as if you had clicked it within Amazon. It all depends on how the affiliate constructs the URL.
To bypass this when constructing Amazon links of your own, include ref=nosim in the URL, just after the ASIN if there's not already a ref= code or in place of any other ref= code that exists.
In case that previous comment didn't make sense, you can find out more in a blog entry I put up a while ago about amazon's ref=nosim links.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Madrid Metro TV screens | Main | Next: Movie ticket
If I'm reading you right, this is the landing page from an off-site link.
The person who developed the other site could've put that link anywhere, with any text. Possibly even using a redirction service so that you had no way to know it was an Amazon link at all, much less what book it was a link to. It's thus quite possible that you would not, in fact, know what you'd clicked on.
I'm not sure it's any gain over taking you staight to the book, though.
Posted by: Menolly at February 24, 2004 03:23 PM