affiliate disguised at merchant in yahoo serps

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affiliate disguised at merchant in yahoo serps

help me understand

koncept

10:23 pm on Apr 11, 2008 (gmt 0)

I did a search in Yahoo for a popular term related to dating. The first result was 'exampledatingsite.com', with no affiliate id attached to the displayed url.

When I clicked this result I found myself at exampledatingsite.com&aff=blahblah

On further examination I noticed that page title in the yahoo results was not the one used by the actual site.

I know very little about cloaking but I am assuming that this particular affiliate is somehow using cloaking to purposely take over the dating site's lisint in Yahoo. Is this possible?

If using cloaking, how did they manage to have the site's original url used in the search results.

koncept

12:11 am on Apr 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

Actually, this affiliate has the top four spots in yahoo, each for a different exampledating site showing no aff id in the url at yahoo, but once clicked on the aff id is there.

volatilegx

12:12 am on Apr 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

Is it possible? Sure :)

Marcia

4:21 am on Apr 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

somehow using cloaking to purposely take over the dating site's lisint in Yahoo. Is this possible?

I've seen it happen with an affiiate site "taking over" a product merchant's #1 listing for the primary search term, but it definitely wasn't cloaking in that case and was unintentional on their part. However, this merchant protested paying the commission even though there was NO violation of the affiliate agreement in that case.

Are they emulating the identity of the dating site, trying to give the impression that they're actually the merchant site? Whatever the affiliate is doing, are they still complying with the affiliate TOS regarding trademark? If they're in compliance, it's strictly a search issue.