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I’ve been meaning to write an explanation of the afsrc=1 parameter for a long time. I’ve been collecting questions and it’s remained half-written for several months. I saw a reference to it recently and thought I’d wrap it up. I was directly involved in the creation of this, but am no longer at Be Free / Commission Junction, so I guess you might call this an “Unofficial afsrc FAQ”.

What is this afsrc=1 parameter I see in reference to preventing other affiliates from stealing clicks?
First a little history. The afsrc=1 parameter was designed as part of the “Affiliate Code of Conduct”, a joint product of the then four major affiliate networks back in the Fall of 2002. By the time the code was released, Linkshare bailed out at the last minute (the only accurate way I can describe it) and Be Free, Commission Junction, and Performics remained. Since then, Be Free and Commission Junction have merged. Today’s Code of Conduct is still maintained by CJ and Performics.

It’s success can be debated forever, and I don’t wish to go there, but the spirit of the code of conduct was genuine (at least to me), which was to prevent one affiliate from stepping on another affiliate through use of any automated means (typically a software application that automatically clicked on behalf of the user). The intention was to put this owness on the affiliates who were doing the stepping. In plain english, “If your software detects another affiilate in the mix, back off.”

This posed a technical problem. The way these software programs work is that they obvserve the user’s browsing and when they see a url of a store with an affiliate program to which they belong, they spring into action. By the same method, they should be able to see if a network affiliate link was present, or clicked on, and therefore, don’t “spring”. However, some affiliates, for various reasons, hide affiliate links behind a local redirect. This makes the affiliate link look like a local link, e.g., http://www.affiliatesite.com/go.php?store=234. So we came up with this method for affiliates to add a marker on links to say, “hey, this is an affiliate link. back off.” The afsrc=1 parameter is that marker, and that same link might look like this: http://www.affiliatesite.com/go.php?store=234&afsrc=1

What is the code again? Afsrc? Affsrc? afscr?
There has been much confusion over the years about the name and I’ve seen it misspelled many times in message board posts. The name came from an abbreviation of “Affiliate Source”, meaning the source of this link is an affiliate, thus afsrc. We just tried to make it small and unique. It’s afsrc=1

What do I put in my links exactly?
You need to put afsrc=1 in the query string of a url. That may mean that it gets preceded by an ampersand (&) or a question mark (?) depending on whether your link already has a query string.

A query string is a set of parameters that go at the end of a URL, like this:

http://www.affiliatesite.com/go.php?id=123&page=home

Query strings always start with a question mark, and each name/value pair (name=value) is separated by an ampersand. So if you don’t have a querystring already, you’ll put ?afsrc=1 on the end of the url. If you do have a query string you’ve put &afsrc=1 on the end. Your URLs may look something like this:

http://www.affiliatesite.com/go.php?id=123&page=home&afsrc=1
http://www.affiliatesite.com/go-merch-123.html?afsrc=1

Will this parameter break my website?
It’s possible. Most webservers and scripts that handle the url will ignore parameters they don’t know about. I’ve seen .ASP pages break when there are parameters they aren’t expecting. I don’t know if the current implementation of IIS and Active Server Pages (now .net) still exhibits this behavior.

Do I need to put this parameter on regular affiliate links? And why don’t the networks do this?
No, you do not need to put this parameter on regular affiliate links. Any software that is designed to look for the afsrc=1 parameter should detect regular network affiliate links already.

I have already put this code on my regular affiliate links. Is that a problem?
In any case that I’ve ever seen, no. If the click goes to through to the proper place on the merchant site with no visible problems, you’re very likely getting tracked properly. There is no need to change them all back.

Why should the responsibility be mine to code my links with this parameter?
It’s not, unless you are putting affiliate links behind other URLs.

Which software programs watch for this parameter?
I’ve been out of the mix for quite a while, but last I knew, any TopMoxie solution (Ebates, etc.) and Shop at Home Select were designed to watch for this parameter and not act if it was present in a link that was clicked.

More information about the Code of Conduct and the afsrc=1 parameter:
The Code of Conduct at CJ.com
Affiliate Tip Article: Protect your Affiliate Links
Xblock.com’s reprint of the Code with some background.

Affiliate Board Discussions:
Oh, there are too many to list…see these search results:
Google Search Results for afsrc on ABW
Google Search Results for afsrc on webmasterworld

I realize this, or something like it, has been a long time coming, and the networks haven’t exactly publicized this sort of information and relied more on word of mouth and message boards. Criticism of that has been weighing on me for three years, so this is a small bit to rectify that and I hope this helps someone. I’ll add more questions and answers to this if I get more.