So is the consensus that seo urls like what phpbay has is ok since the link is not hidden or cloaked when it goes through to ebay?

Secondly, I have many urls which are for example; http: // vintagecars . com/ford. So is that ok? It’s technically after the 3rd slash. They’ve been that way well over a year with no problems thus far.

Not from my understanding…

IF you cloaked from facebook > eBay, that would be bad and prohibited.

Since your link within BANS (which is really just an URL rewrite versus a cloak) is going direct from your domain to eBay, its fine.

Mark

I was wondering about the the link cloaking

“if you cloak your own links through a tracking mechanism off your domain”

Does this mean that the BANS option to cloak our links is going to be a violation?

Kim

Looks like it may be time to officially retire the BANS Toolbar. I haven’t been able to upgrade it to be compatible with Firefox v3, so I was just going to let the URL expire in a few months and not renew it. But, it does have eBay links, so I should probably pull the plug now and let everyone who may have it installed know that they should uninstall it.

Rochelle

You are correct, I was wrong… the $5 payment is a one time only thing, I assume, to clear out the payment database and start over! (On their accounting end)

@ Cherie –

From the reply posted ont he forum, it looks like they are more concerned about domain names than anything else when it comes to the infringements.

I have MANY sites that have a brand name in the third category slash: ex: domain .com/brands/mikita/

From reading their forum post, they are MORE concerned about things like: cheapmikitadrills .com, than the trailing url.

(Where the domain have the trademark in it)

@ Greg –

I wouldn’t change anything without first – letting them provide a clear explanation, and two – sending them an email asking if its OK.

It really doesnt read like they are against using a trademark AFTER the trailing slash… but moreso in the domain itself.

One thing I DID read this morning… everyone who has built on Squidoo, blogger.blogs, etc etc… they have alot of work to do!

One of the forum posters asked about a time frame for getting into compliance, since they have blogger blogs and squidoo pages that use an eBay sidebar widget… ALL will apparently need to be rebuilt or junked.

Mark

I think it is a common practice if you have a site focusing on a nice to have brands as categories, and so those could potentially be in the URLs.

For example, If I created niche site selling washing machines or washing machine parts, I may have categories for Maytag, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, etc. I would assume that those type of names could potentially be Trademarks or Servicemarks.

I’ve understood the importance of not having core domain names with trademarks or servicemarks, but I’ve never thought that having these names in the URLs (past the core domain name) was a bad practice.

Do I need to look back at these type of URLs for category names and start making modifications, i.e. abbreviating them or altering?

Changing those would concern me for already indexed pages. Should I 301 or 302 the pages to the new names?

Totally confused – Greg

I think on the whole it’s a good thing but they will have to clarify the tradenames in urls, as you said, they have those in their own urls.

Is the PHPbay plugin still going to be ok?

Do we now have to troll through all of our sites/places with links and remove/edit them or will they just not count?