Recently an executive from Internet Brands addressed this issue for them with a group of 35 Moderators. Perhaps one of them could recap what they heard and perhaps even Internet Brands will step forward to address this for you.

In essence it was a pilot test, since discontinued and the data under review for reintroduction in 2010 or not. Moderators did not hold anything back in their concern and criticism of the test without good communication to FlyerTalk members, etc. Internet Brands did hear a full complement of input from this group which was taken back as part of their review for 2010.

Are Skimlinks Still Active on FT?
 

Are skimlinks still used by IB on FT?

Some conga participants are running into problems when using proper referral link over SPAM Forum. I just gave them a headsup about this 2-year-old practice.

Is IB still getting credit from those referral traffic secretly and denying FTers' referral opportunities? :eek:

There are no skimlinks on FT at this time.

Thanks for the update.

Would you be able to address why the referral links in this conga thread no longer works if there's no skimlink on FT?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/s-p-m...-up-bonus.html

Right now, after FT redirecting, the referral links are moot since it only lands on homepage. It used to be quite easy and the referral reference id would still stay and/or show in the landed web address when using the links. Not any more. It's causing some difficulties in conducting conga on FT.

Here's what's happening.
1. You follow the link: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=191267
2. The website, mrrebates.com, sets a cookie with the referring id:
askmrrebates=pid=10&refid=191267&cookie%5Fversion=V2&referrer%5Furl=; expires=Tue, 01-Jan-2030 05:00:00 GMT; domain=.mrrebates.com; path=/, ASPSESSIONIDSCQCBQCA=AGAINCMAPBKPIAIIOEDCBFJF; path=/
3. The website canonicalizes it's pagerank by sending you a 301 redirect to their homepage.
4. Your browser follows the redirect to the homepage
5. Any forther activity you do is tracked by the cookie, not by the refid that's in the url.

Thank you, Dick, for the tech details. However, according to this poster, that referral cookie wasn't "registered" nor "triggered" when proper referral links were used.

I wasn't trying to bug IB's tech depart for tracing the referrals. It's just in the past, when referral links were provided and clicked in SPAM Forum, I didn't have the problems. When skimlinks were introduced on FT, things become differently.

Apparently, there are some missing links here. Where did it go wrong? Is this from FT's end? Of should the conga participants follow up with said website?