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RIP Amazon Affiliate ref=nosim

September 24, 2007 by Shawn Collins

I just noticed that the ref=nosim tag for Amazon affiliate links is obsolete.

If ref-nosim doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll give a little background. In the past, the links that Amazon provided to affiliates would bring the user to a page that featured the intended book title, as well as a few other titles they might be interested in.

The visitor had to click again to get to the actual product page if they wanted to purchase the book. However, affiliates could add ref=nosim into the URL (right before their Amazon affiliate id) and their clicks would go right to the main page for that book.

So anyhow, Amazon allows affiliates to select a URL they wish to have as their link these days, so ref=nosim is no longer needed.

However, I’ve got years and years of links with ref=nosim on various sites, and I was concerned about them dying in the near future.

I posted in the Amazon affiliates forum about the issue, and got this response from another Amazon affiliate…

I asked Amazon.com about this and they said that you should start using the new links; however, if you have any old links they will still give you credit for any items sold.

So anybody using ref=nosim should be good for a while, but I’d suggest updating your links to the new version just to be safe.

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