Please download the new version of WordBay via your admin dashboard or the link on the site sidebar. This update is critical if you have geotargetting switched OFF! There were two major areas of fixes:
RSS-related “fixes”
After continued discussions about the possibility of WordBay somehow not generating RSS feeds properly and possibly accounting for a reduction in clicks on the part of some users, I sat down on Sunday and took another in-depth look at the RSS feed parameters and the results produced by them. I do want to point out once again that the RSS feed is NOT properly (or at all!) documented by eBay, thus all scripts using the eBay RSS feed have effectively reverse-engineered the feed to one extent or another to determine the function of the different parameters. After painstaking work I now have a detailed list of many of the parameters and what they do. I had never actually written them out like that before and you will not find this list anywhere on the net to my knowledge - my “competitors” are probably keeping it to themselves, but I plan to publish these in a subsequent post. But what I wanted to know, and some users too, was is there anything about the RSS url generated by WordBay which could cause “rover” (affiliate) links to not be generated or tracked properly?
The upshot of my investigation was as follows. Comparing the feed url (the “rss.api” one) produced by the EPN feed generator, with the feed url produced by WordBay, and remembering that each parameter affects the results of the RSS search in some way there are the following difference:
Category 1 (differences in parameters with known function)
- some 6 parameters supported by the EPN generator that are not supported by WordBay, e.g. “Search description as well as title”, “Auction only/Bin only” etc. (I just never got round to including these) and thus are omitted
- some 6 parameters supported by WordBay but not by the feed gen, e.g. “Min/max price”, “Min no. of bids”. These I originally reverse-engineered from the eBay Advanced Search page and appear to work as advertised. They are probably omitted from the feed gen for simplicity’s sake.
I believe neither of the above category of parameter can have any effect whatsoever on click tracking.
Also, however, there were:
Category 2 (differences in parameters of unknown function)
- 2 or 3 parameters (catref, from and saaff) that are present in both, but whose function is unknown (like I say, no docs). saaff appears to specify the affiliate network, i.e. it is always set to afepn in the feed, and I though, hey-ho, what if this is not set in WB, THAT could affect tracking! However, a brief check confirmed this has long been present in WB - false alarm.
- 2 parameters present in the feed gen URL that were NOT present in WordBay’s URL and whose significance is undocumented, together with the meaning of the the values assigned to them. These I added, with the values supplied by the feed gen (which do not appear to vary).
- 5 parameters present in the WB URL (reverse-engineered from Advanced Search) but not present in the feed gen URL which are undocumented and which I thus deemed unnecessary and dropped.
In this second category of parameters of unknown function I can be less sure that one of them does not have anything to do with tracking. However, I think it unlikely that the changes I made will change anything: a) we still have no firm evidence that invalid (untrackable) links are being produced through the feed in WordBay and b) it is likely that provided the campaign ID, i.e. the afepn parameter (and probably saaff) are specified, rover links are being produced correctly.
In addition, I took this new version of the plugin and refreshed a listings test page a total of 30 times - 10 times each for US, UK and DE eBay sites, and did not get anything but valid “rover” links every time. I also tried this (though somewhat fewer times) with v1.22 and got the same result.
I also created a test campaign and tried to get some clicks tracked (yes, clicking my own links - so ban me) but these were not tracked at all, probably because I was logged in to eBay or something, so this proves nothing really.
But if there is any chance that this will make any difference I am glad I took the time to investigate this and clean up the code in WB. Keep me posted. At the moment I still tend to be of the opinion that EPN’s tracking is up the spout. I have tried to be as transparent as possible regarding the WB code, whereas we have no insight whatsoever into the workings of EPN and QCP…
Geo-targetting-related fix
Oh man! Hangs head in shame! It turns out that geotargetting has been fixed permanently ON for all users ever since it was introduced way back when, and all for the want of a single “=” in the code. That’s quite a biggie, and does explain some vague complaints from way back when that it was behaving oddly. So SORRY!! In my defence, it is very hard to test and debug geotargetting as obviously I cannot hop over to another country to do so, and also I live in a non-eBay country, but I am surprised this was not picked up sooner.
In my opinion this is not a major disaster - the IP database IS fairly accurate on the whole, perhaps you might have lost a very small percentage of visitors who were wrongly targetted, and on the other side perhaps you had some Norwegian visitors who might have bought from US eBay (say!) but I don’t think there are too many of those.
Anyway, it’s fixed now.
I have also added (from 1.22 actually, but cleaned it up a bit) a strong suggestion in the admin backend for people to subscribe to the feed for this blog as these kinds of critical updates are happening frequently, yet there are people out there still using some absolutely ancient versions of WordBay, which can’t be good!
Let’s stay in touch, I have a feeling the RSS click-tracking saga is not over yet…
Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by markowe
Filed under: Uncategorized
Upgraded to v1.25 so far so good. Geo-targeting now turns off correctly.
ps. if you can use Tor to test outside your country (grab the “Tor Browser Bundle for Windows” for everything you need, no install needed). It’s a bit of a lottery but you normally end up with a US IP. It’s not speedy fast, but it’s quicker than setting up a free VPN IMHO.
Wow, thanks a lot Mark for spending so much time and work on this. It really is appreciated! It makes me feel a lot better (and Im sure others too) as it helps to get to the bottom of if there’s something wrong or not. And even if in the end the tracking turns out to be ok and has been all along, then at least this uncovered some other WB flaws that needed fixed.
Also - at least from my point of view - I find this type of investigating and pinpointing very interesting and stimulating. I just hope your toddler hasn’t been too neglected.
After I install the update I shall see if the clicks number will become “alrighty” again. I have just went through a second exchange with EPN and to my disappointment and frustration they still weren’t willing to help me, let alone take a closer look at my campaign. This time they told me I should contact the author of WB though I had already pointed out in both emails that I have been closely in touch with you. Go figure! I sent off one more reply and if this doesn’t garner a more serious response by them (after all, my inflated click stats could still be solely on EPNs end) I think I will give up. But hopefully this WB update fixes whatever issue I might have had. Once again thanks!
Slight correction: They had told me to contact Wordpress. Not sure if that was a typo…? LOL!!
Hi, no, I tend to do most of my work while baby is sleeping, ha ha! Which is partly why it’s so sporadic.
Yes, it’s always good to dig back into the code and try to improve it. I’d love to sit down and rewrite the whole thing, but that ain’t gonna happen now. I’d rather write something new from scratch that was not solely based on EPN. Yes, they are usually keen to fob off any blame for problems to software writers, they are the same with BANS. However, while I can provide evidence that I have taken every precaution to ensure things are working, they are not so forthcoming. BTW, I see no makegood for last month as yet…
Chuck, thanks for the geo-testing tip! You do keep yourself busy! Want to rewrite a Wordpress plugin?
After I install the update I shall see if the clicks number will become “alrighty” again.
Erm, how can you know that if you are using the same campid on your WordBay links as you do for your hand coded Rover links? Surly you would have to give each particular linking device it’s own campid only then can you show that clicks are up/down on different WordBay versions. And even then you would need to take into account your visitor stats.
Want to rewrite a Wordpress plugin?
Naw, yer ok.
ChuckMcB, youre absolutely right. And trust me, Ive done my homework. Im using a different custom ID for each aff link and I can tell WordBay clicks on my transaction reports by the fact that they show up with the page url as custom ID. The last time I checked (about a week ago) these types of links/clicks reported was considerably down for the 2nd half of February hence my suspicions and inquiries. And yes, of course Ive taken my visitor stats into account too. My organic traffic had quite an increase in the same time period so the click inflation made no sense in that regard too. Why do you think Ive been bugging Mark and EPN so much?
Hi there
I’m running the latest version of Wordpress and tried to install your plugin automatically. However, on unpacking, Wordpress gives the following error message:
Incompatible archive PCLZIP_ERR_BAD_FORMAT (-10) : Unable to find End of Central Dir Record signature
.. and it won’t install.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Many thanks,
Anita
Anita, never heard of this error before, but I see it has come up on the WordPress forums: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/280186 - it’s not a WordBay problem per se - try installing another plugin just to see, I am guessing you will get the same error. See if that forum thread helps - if you are on 2.8 you might need to upgrade Wordpress first. Or just install the plugin manually if you know how.
Hi there - yep, already running the latest version of Wordpress when the error appeared (2.9.2).
I manually FTP’d your plugin to the server and have been able to activate it successfully!
Thanks for the advice - much appreciated. And thanks for the plugin!
Anita
As an update - Im still waiting for word from EPN, apparently they are really investigating my site (*hoping*). In the meantime I have kept an eye on most of my pages and have noticed some odd behavior by WordBay which could account for some of the inflated clicks (which Im still experiencing). Any help or fixes for the following points would be greatly appreciated:
1.In Wordpress, whenever the default font gets changed for the WordBay command (you know, this stuff: [wordbay]incredible money generating keyword[/wordbay]), lets say into arial, the listings dont show up on the published post anymore. Why is that? The problem is that even though I always try to keep that part default font, my regular page font is arial and sometimes wordpress does this automatic formatting which messes things up. Since I do a lot of editing and updating, I actually just found out that one of my main traffic pages had no wordbay listings showing precisely due to this.
2.When I click on WordBay listings, the Ebay page loads in the same browser window. I’m pretty sure that before the updated version the links opened in a new window!? I definitely prefer the latter as that keeps visitors browsing on my site longer around and thus more clicks (”pogo-sticking”). From what I can tell this effects each different link type in the wordbay listings.
3.It happens quite often that when I check my recent post pages, on page 2, on the last post, the wordbay listings dont show up. This is regardless of problem number 1 and sometimes when I reload page 2, the listings finally show up. This is on no other post page except page 2. Weird or what?
Alright, hoping to hear back soon. Thanks!
Hi Dennis - glad to see you’re keeping busy! I am aware I owe you an email too, I have just had to pause WordBay work for a week or two, I couldn’t really afford to invest any more time in it after all that recent tweaking. ChuckMcB has also done quite a rewrite of WB, tidying up a lot of messy stuff in my code, so I need to incorporate that into a new version. I don’t expect that to eliminate any of your issues but it’s nice to be on top of things and know things are working as well as possible.
About your issues:
1) I couldn’t reproduce this, so wait, how are you changing the “default font”? I am not sure what you meant by that - I tried editing the html for a page and putting
<span style="font-style: arial">[wordbay]killer keywords[/wordbay]</span>but everything worked fine. I am not sure this is what you meant though, so let me know. However, I should say that the WordBay filter function which processes the post contents is used by lots of other plugins too, so test this with another plugin that uses post tags if you get a chance. The filter only takes actual text into account, disregarding fonts and any other html, but I guess some unknown quirk can never be completely out of the question.
2) I just had a look back through old versions of WordBay. Actually, no, I never added an option to add target=”_blank” to outgoing links, dunno why, just never got round to it, but I know a lot of users did it manually. Maybe you did? It would have got overwritten of course with the new version. I will look to include that asap, it’s a useful option, I agree, and could have direct implications for QCP.
3) Again, can’t reproduce this. Do you mean on your main page, when you click “Previous posts” at the bottom? I tried this on your site and I still got listings on the second page. But what is happening, is the listing blank, or are you getting “No items…”? I am GUESSING what might be happening sometimes is that because you have several listings per page (i.e. multiple posts), the feed is having to be fetched multiple times and it could be that the feed is not served up fast enough and sometimes times out. If you have the Magpie cache turned off too (did you ever do that, there was a discussion about that a while back?), maybe you are not getting feed results back every time, and the page 2 thing could just be a red herring (though see below). There are a couple of variables you can play with:
define('MAGPIE_FETCH_TIME_OUT', $$$$$$);where $$$$$ is the time in seconds before timing out. The default is 2 secs, which I guess is quite short, but remember, if you set this to say, 10, and you load a page with 5 WB listings on it, (on a very bad day) the page could take up to 50 seconds to load as the plugin waits for the feed each time.
Another option to look into is:
define('MAGPIE_CACHE_AGE', $$$$$);where $$$$ is the cache time in seconds. What this means is that if $$$$ seconds has not elapsed since the page was loaded, the plugin will get the listing from the cache rather than directly from eBay. Of course, eBay listings have to be fresh, so I think 1 hr (the default) is an absolute maximum.
I think you can put these “define” statements pretty much anywhere in your WordPress code if they are not already set (they usually aren’t, unless another plugin is using RSS too) but perhaps it would make most sense to put them into the WordBay code. Guess I should add these options too, ho hum… You would probably put them here:
function WBlisting (bla bla){[...insert here...]$searchterms = urlencode ($searchterms);
SO, this could explain your page 2 problem - the posts on page two are probably accessed less often, so they are not cached. When you load page 2 the first time it has to fetch 3 (I think I counted, guess it depends) feeds from eBay. With a shortish timeout of 2s there is some chance they will not all be fetched properly. Once they are cached though (after a couple of refreshes) they should appear consistently, at least for the next hour. Make sense? COULD be an explanation, try tinkering with these settings and let me know. A longer timeout would be a good starting point.
P.S. There is another issue here, a lot of people had turned off the Magpie cache as it fills up the Wordpress database at an alarming rate. I haven’t yet figured out why it is not deleting expired entries, but perhaps it’s best just to lengthen your timeout time and not turn caching on, at least till I figure out what’s with that…
P.P.S. I have done some reading and it turns out WordPress post 2.8 has a built-in feed_fetch function which I have not been using up till now. I think I will move over to using this as soon as possible, it will allow me to set a cache time and get rid of Magpie and it’s d/base bloating activities.
Hi Mark,
once again thanks for all your input. Just real quick - is there an easy way to add the “open in new window” feature in the wordpress code? I presume in wordbay.php? Would be nice if you could give me a code. If its more complex however, I’ll just have to wait. Strange, I could have sworn my previous WordBay listings opened up in new windows….hmm. Anyway, dont have much time right now so I will probably respond more in detail later. And just so you know - you do not owe me an email, or anything else for that matter. Its really quite alright. :o)
Hi Dennis, thanks, oh, you know, I mean we sort of never finished that line of discussion, but it’s still foremost in my mind!
I want to put out a refreshed version of WB in the near future and include the “open in new page” option that you would like to see. However, I am having a little trouble introducing some of the other changes I mentioned, to do with getting rid of Magpie and using Wordpress native RSS support (well, it’s just SimplePie actually) - not as simple as it seemed… Couple that with the fact I have some biiiig contracts coming up in my “real” job, I think I had better explain how to do it yourself and promise that the next version will include this option.
Find the THREE places in the code where it says “rel = ‘nofollow’” and directly after that, and before whatever is after (”title = …”), add:
target='_blank'
Adding it to all three places makes sure all the links behave that way - the “Click to sign up” link, the product title link, and one other, I forget which.
I just tried it myself, it works fine.
Right, back soon I hope!
Just fired you a new version Mark which includes admin option to toggle link target as you and Dennis are discussing, as well as displaying impression pixels and a manual search link when there is no result.
Ohh yea and an option to remove duplicate listing to beat sellers that flood the listings with the same item multiple times.
Alright, let me catch up…
>>1) I couldn’t reproduce this, so wait, how are you changing the “default font”? I am not sure what you meant by that - I tried editing the html for a page and putting
[wordbay]killer keywords[/wordbay]
but everything worked fine. I am not sure this is what you meant though, so let me know. However, I should say that the WordBay filter function which processes the post contents is used by lots of other plugins too, so test this with another plugin that uses post tags if you get a chance. The filter only takes actual text into account, disregarding fonts and any other html, but I guess some unknown quirk can never be completely out of the question.< http://www.laptoptips.ca/projects/tinymce-advanced/
Its really useful and I dont wanna miss this tool anymore. I guess for now I just have to be watchful and always make sure that a post is still showing the listings after editing. I guess checking is what a good blogger should always do anyway.
>>2) I just had a look back through old versions of WordBay. Actually, no, I never added an option to add target=”_blank” to outgoing links, dunno why, just never got round to it, but I know a lot of users did it manually. Maybe you did? It would have got overwritten of course with the new version. I will look to include that asap, it’s a useful option, I agree, and could have direct implications for QCP.< (<a rel=’nofollow’ target=’_blank’ title = ‘”. $itemTitle .)
Ok, as far as that caching thing goes, I understand the issue. But I dont know anything about MagPie and caching in general so you kinda lost me there lol. Yes, it is when you click on “previous page” and its just blank at the bottom post. I suppose the not loading only happens during peak hours of traffic. I will see if I play around with the caching settings as per your instructions. It does sounds like its disharmonious to the latest wordpress versions so it would be good to get this up to par. Let me ask you this btw: could this cashing problem and not loading of the listing also happen to a single post page? Like if the page is full of images and traffic is really heavy…cos 2 secs really doesnt sound like a lot.
As for Chucks last comments, these edits sound great! Especially the duplicate listing filter! Cos that really has bothered me for quite a while. Its annoying to see 4 out of 5 listings with the same picture and same product. So usually when I caught that I would go to the trouble and edit the post and filter out a common keyword from these listings. Which isn’t ideal and nobody has the time to monitor their site 24/7. So thanks a lot for your work, Chuck - cant wait for that feature! And of course thanks again to you too, Mark.
How come my comment got cut and messed up again? Let me try again (feel free to delete the first):
Alright, let me catch up…
“1) I couldn’t reproduce this, so wait, how are you changing the “default font”? I am not sure what you meant by that - I tried editing the html for a page and putting
[wordbay]killer keywords[/wordbay]
but everything worked fine. I am not sure this is what you meant though, so let me know. However, I should say that the WordBay filter function which processes the post contents is used by lots of other plugins too, so test this with another plugin that uses post tags if you get a chance. The filter only takes actual text into account, disregarding fonts and any other html, but I guess some unknown quirk can never be completely out of the question.”
I do not use any other plugin with post tags. Since you cant reproduce this Im thinking that the problem has to do with the TinyMCE plugin. Its an enhanced editor bar with extra features and its there where I change fonts. I guess this plugin has a conflict with WordBay or Wordpress’ own formatting process - or both. If you like you can download TinyMCE here and try this error out yourself. –> http://www.laptoptips.ca/projects/tinymce-advanced/
Its really useful and I dont wanna miss this tool anymore. I guess for now I just have to be watchful and always make sure that a post is still showing the listings after editing. I guess checking is what a good blogger should always do anyway.
“2) I just had a look back through old versions of WordBay. Actually, no, I never added an option to add target=”_blank” to outgoing links, dunno why, just never got round to it, but I know a lot of users did it manually. Maybe you did? It would have got overwritten of course with the new version. I will look to include that asap, it’s a useful option, I agree, and could have direct implications for QCP.”
Well, you supplied the code below and thank you very much for that! I implemented it and all the links open in a new window now.
Although I have to tell you that your instruction was a bit confusing: “Find the THREE places in the code where it says “rel = ‘nofollow’” and directly after that, and before whatever is after (”title = …”),” You meant to say “before (”title = …”),” , right? Because when I put it after title and update the php file it gives me a fatal error and deactivates the plugin. So I tried to put it before ”title = …” and that works.
–> (<a rel=’nofollow’ target=’_blank’ title = ‘”. $itemTitle .)
Ok, as far as that caching thing goes, I understand the issue. But I dont know anything about MagPie and caching in general so you kinda lost me there lol. Yes, it is when you click on “previous page” and its just blank at the bottom post. I suppose the not loading only happens during peak hours of traffic. I will see if I play around with the caching settings as per your instructions. It does sounds like its disharmonious to the latest wordpress versions so it would be good to get this up to par. Let me ask you this btw: could this cashing problem and not loading of the listing also happen to a single post page? Like if the page is full of images and traffic is really heavy…cos 2 secs really doesnt sound like a lot.
As for Chucks last comments, these edits sound great! Especially the duplicate listing filter! Cos that really has bothered me for quite a while. Its annoying to see 4 out of 5 listings with the same picture and same product. So usually when I caught that I would go to the trouble and edit the post and filter out a common keyword from these listings. Which isn’t ideal and nobody has the time to monitor their site 24/7. So thanks a lot for your work, Chuck - cant wait for that feature! And of course thanks again to you too, Mark.
It looks this site doesnt display comments correctly when one uses “>> <<” for quotes. Interesting.
Ok, so would the following be correct for the magpie settings?
function WBlisting (bla bla)
{
[define(’MAGPIE_FETCH_TIME_OUT’, 5);]
[define(’MAGPIE_CACHE_AGE’, 1380);]
$searchterms = urlencode ($searchterms);
I want 5 secs time out and 23 mins cache. Btw, does 23 mins cache mean nobody will see a fresh listings feed within a 23 min time span?
Hi Dennis, let’s try and answer quickly and then see if I can get some work done on WordBay today.
Yes, in short, try those settings, they seem reasonable. Not sure how you came by 23 minutes (why not 22.5 :)), but yes, that should only get a fresh listing for that page every 23 minutes, regardless of who looks at that page. You may conclude that is too long, but you can always experiment. 5 seconds would then be the time that the feed routine waits when there is NO cached version in order to fetch another one. So yes, there could be a 5s+ wait for someone, but only once every 23 minutes. Theoretically. Yes, I need to upgrade the routine to Wordpress’ “native” routine (actually, it’s just an alternative to Magpie, Simplepie, that got integrated into the WP core), but it’s proving a little tricky, WP haven’t documented how it works really, though I more or less figured it out.
With a single post page, again, if you put the time out at 5s that should be enough time for the feed to be fetched, and blank pages should be relatively rare with the cache time extended. If it doesn’t seem to be working it MAY be that the setting, something like MAGPIE_CACHE_ON needs to be set, sorry I can’t look that up now, but you should find it easily.
Simplepie has better integration of caching, and it doesn’t bloat the database like Magpie does, so I am looking forward to getting this done.
Yes, great work Chuck, am looking forward to integrating all his changes (which also include a reworked admin panel, very nice!) - I have one obstacle, but I am going to write a post about that asking for help!
ps. for the next version don’t forget to update/remove details of eBay India, it’s affiliate program is now closed.
Yes, got that email from EPN, thanks for the reminder. In the past I have left those programmes in, but put them in brackets in the listings to denote that they are obsolete. Maybe it would be better to remove them altogether because of geotargetting - most people don’t want to send free traffic to eBay
Mark, I arrived at the 23 because I have a knack for numerology. 2+3=5. 5=balance,equilibrium. Hence my WordBay is also set to show 5 listings per post.
I think it would be better to change the cache time from 23 to 5 mins, as I still want to maintain freshness.
Hmm, I just tried it out with the code I listed above but it gives me a fatal error. I suppose it needs to be put in a different location? Or I need to insert MAGPIE_CACHE_ON, like you suggested. In what file do I find that?
Ahhh… The old 5-23 combination. Yes, probably a shorter time is better. But why the fatal error, hmmm, well put the cache_on instruction in too, but what is the fatal error exactly. It usually says “Expected a ;” or something. Make sure your lines end with semicolons. Hmm, I’m going to change this soon, just got to find some time, then it will settable in the back end…
Hmm, I think I’m not going to bother with this for now seeing that the new version is around the corner with simplepie. Cos from what I understand that will take care of any loading time-outs, right?