[purplebear]

I'm not really sure where I should be asking this question...so not sure if this is the correct thread or not.
I have a clothing merchant that gets visits every day that sells to a particular type of visitor. After noticing that it seemed to get a lot more visitors than other merchants I've had sales from I decided to visit on my own to see if I could see if anything seemed unusual. It was very slow loading. Not sure why but decided to turn off my pop up blocker and then an ad appeared for another merchant that sold a particular type of clothing that is very relevant to this merchant I have. I would assume that quite a few of the visitors that originate from my site that are visiting the merchant I'm referring to would see this ad that appears and would visit it to see their selection since their product could very much be what they're looking to purchase.
I sent emails to the merchant I have on my site and never received a reply to either of them. I also, wrote to the (not sure what you refer to them as but they're in the CJ, Linkshare, Performics, Shareasale category) and after 2 emails to them that were very nice but didn't help answering my question. They said I should write to the merchant, which I already had and didn't get a reply.
I don't know if the ad that appears would be connected in any way to the merchant I have on my site or not, but if not I would definitely think the merchant would be losing potential sales because of it.
I guess my question is: Is there anything I could be doing about this? Please don't refer me to any parasite links to learn about them because I have already visited them and learned as much as my little brain is capable of understanding I think. lol Pretty sure I don't have any parasiteware, adaware or whatever else name it goes by on my computer since I have 2 programs I use for it and another that is being used by my isp.
I've recently had a few sales from other merchants that are on the same page as this merchant who have had a considerable amount less clicks. So I know that visitors are interested in purchasing from that page. I don't know how many I am losing going to this other site I'm referring to, though. Not sure why, but it appears that visitors to my site don't seem to mess around. lol Think odds are that if they click and visit the sites there's a pretty good chance they're going to buy something since it seems like they know what they're looking for.
Would very much appreciate I guess .....is if anybody could explain to me what it is that is going on and what if anything I can do to stop it. I realize I probably sound pretty naive or stupid since I don't quite understand what is happening but would appreciate any help

[TheHoff]

That is commonly called a 'leak' ... your traffic is leaking out to another site. I wouldn't be surprised if that was another company owned by the same merchant -- they pop up the ad and your visitor leaves -- to their other site where they don't have to pay you a commission.

Dump them! If it looks like the path through the shopping cart is paved with ads (1-800 numbers, live operator chats, adsense, links out to other merchants) send your traffic somewhere else.

[purplebear]

Thank you very much for answering my question.

[animatic1]

Maybe this thread is a good place to ask my question, since it seems to be along the same lines as purplebear's question. Let me explain what I'm seeing on my site and then I'll ask the question. Every now and then, one or more of my merchants will get a significant increase in click-throughs, with little or no impressions, ie Sierra Trading Post getting 873 click-throughs and only 1 impression. If that were the only merchant on that particular page, then I would not be too concerned, but that merchant is one of as many as 30 merchants on a page. Also, these increased clicks only seem to be on LinkShare and Clix Galore banners and links. My other affiliate networks get maybe one or two clicks from banners and links on the same page. I have also looked at the visitor logs on my server, and they show either very few or even no visitors recorded for that page on that day. I have emailed both LinkShare and Clix Galore about this and was told by LS that they see no problem, as according to their records, my impressions are many more than my clicks. But, what they failed to see is that I'm refering to one day's impression/click ratio, not the alltime ratio. Just because I get 1000 clicks to 1 impression on one day and then get 1 click on 1000 impressions a few days later, doesn't make it equal. At least not how I see it. My question is this, am I being paranoid, or do I have a legitimate reason for being concerned? I know this is an old thread, but hopefully someone will see that there is a new post in it and reply.

[purplebear]

Just spotted this, so I'll bump it for you to see if somebody can answer it for you.

[animatic1]

Originally Posted by purplebear

Just spotted this, so I'll bump it for you to see if somebody can answer it for you.

Thanx. I think I may have gotten my answer in another thread though. It seems that search engine spiders cause clicks to be recorded on your affiliate links, so that may have been what happened. I guess I need to invest in a good robots.txt file.