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Amazon Bots Cause Grief For Associate Web Sites
theodp writes "Amazon Associates and Web Services developers are crying foul over the hammering they're taking from ill-behaved bots that Amazon had subsidiary Alexa Internet dispatch to evaluate the 'quality and reliability' of their sites. Amazon fessed up and acknowledged problems exist, but points to recent Operating Agreement changes that not only give Amazon and any of its corporate affiliates the right to do so, but also to use unstated technical means to overcome any methods that are used to try to block or interfere with such crawling or monitoring. Interesting stance from the folks who called on the Senate to prosecute those who degrade the technical quality of service at web sites."
Noting comes for free. Presumably, they are Amazon Affiliates to get a cut off a sold book. You don't get anything for free. Perhaps an opportune time to do the Barnes and Noble thing?
Seems to be going the Microsoft way. They seem to be exploiting their monopoly in their sphere of business. Their recent ploy to patent their click n buy commerce system had attracted lots of attention from the people and the OS community. Many Open-letters were exchanged. But people seemt haev already forgotten; the average human, understandably is worried only about factors that affect him, and that too, immediatly. Now this new issue....
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Hehe. In fact I am filtering cookies, scripts, popups, referrer, webbugs etc.
/. works well that way ;-)
So I guess I am not very informative about my habits - which I think is my freedom to do. And if a site doesn't work that way, the site owners clearly indicate that they are not willing to accept me a s a visitor - which is their freedom.
At least
Simple 'nuff...
Just temporarily (perhaps 1 day) block ANY client's class C (not just that of Alexa's crawler) that starts generating more than X hits per second for longer than five minutes.
By doing so, you haven't taken steps to specifically thwart *Amazon's* activity, you have simply enacted a reasonably security measure to block DOS attacks. If Amazon actually dared to sue for blocking them, you'd have a HELL of a countersuit on the grounds that their 'bot triggered your DOS alarm.
Personally, I'd just block their bot and if they complain, tell them where they can stick their partner agreement. No self respecting online retailer needs their own "partners" degrading their QOS. Anyway, When I want to buy something, I use either Google, or a product-specific price-search engine (like PriceWatch). Amazon counts as my LAST choice for finding something (actually not quite true... If I need to use Google to find a product for sale, I often check Amazon first, just to get things like UPC or ISBN numbers to narrow my search).
The timing of this problem is interesting. A few years back, we had the problem of the one-click patent and the fact that Amazon used it to disrupt the christmas sales of Barnes and Noble. It seems that the one-click thing became a less pressing problem on December 26. Although I can't remember the specifics of other events, it sticks in my mind that other ploys used to disrupt competitors businesses have been timed to screw with the christmas season.
I know that the people being DOS'ed by Amazon are defined as 'affiliates', but maybe Amazon percieves 'affiliates' in the same way Microsoft percieves 'partners'; people to use and then buy or destroy. How much you wanna bet that this problem goes away after christmas? Of course, the claim will be that it was brought to their attention and it was fixed, but the timing of the whole thing is very suspicious. Perhaps this was the plan all along.
In these days of slim margins in business, maybe Amazon figures the average internet user is smart enough to figure that it their preferred site is slow, they will go directly to Amazon for their purchase and Amazon would be able to avoid reimbursement of their 'affiliate' for the sale.
Has this problem been going on, but been unnoticed for a while, or did it just start? I'm no consipiracy theorist, but the elements seem to be there for this to have been intentional and the timing is very suspicious. Why couldn't they have done this last month, or the month before if they're just checking for outdated links? Am I out in left field with this idea?
Anyway... just a different perspective and some food for thought.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
Amazon seems to be good at recommending items in relation with what you're searching for... Why not just force-feed another one of theses "People who searched for this item also enjoyed these (totally unrelated by the way.) items."
That way you potentially save a sale (dont tell me that every single person who clicks on one of those amazon links actually BUYS the product.) and you manage to annoy the reader with some free ads, and potentially screw the associate out of a sale. Everyone wins. (Ok. except perhaps the associate.)
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
But do they have a web services interface? That's the important part.
--Azaroth
Hey,
Amazon's web-bots are looking for outdated links to books that don't exist, etc.
Wouldn't a better solution be to modify the software at amazon.com, so that every time there was a book not found/out of date error, it logged the refering affiliate and HTTP_REFERER request header?
I can't see why they would need bots and suchlike for such a simple procedure...
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Exactly what is non-standard in my way of browsing the web? If you mean unusual I could agree, but non-standard is wrong.
You're confusing technical uses of the word with colloquial ones. Web standards have _never_ been the normal case; there has always been some tweak or extension that makes the web useable in ways that a significant proportion of the decision-makers seem to like.
Your adherence to Standards is a non-standard act (an act against the norm, unusual, et al), and as such it is an unforseen action on your part and not an action on the part of the website owner & their developers to exclude you.
My point wasn't about standards, it was about whose action caused you to be unable to use the non-standard commerical websites. Since non-standard design is the norm for the industry, it's a case of the website failing to take extraordinary action (making their sites standards-compliant) to keep you as a visitor, and not them taking action to deny you as a visitor.
At best, they're ignorant and you're suffering from the consequences of your choice. At worst, they're gulity of not wanting to expend the effort to accomodate you--but that only happens if they have the ability & opportunity to meet your needs. (i.e., only to those websites that you contact with a request for a toned-down main or alternate version of their web page that you can visit.)
Never ascribe to intent what may be accounted for by simply rolling out premature code that has been subjected to very little test. Amazon has a bias toward making schedules at the expense of testing.
Here amazon admits the issue and how they have stopped the bot until they can investigate the issue.
Amazon is actually very affiliate friendly. They have banned the scumware like wurldmedia, ebates and others that try and hijack affiliate comissions. Unlike affiliate programs by overstock.com,buy.com and others that are so desperate for short term cash they will screw over their current affiliates for some quick cash.
Considering buy.com is so deep in with the scumware people, i am surprised slashdot.org advertises them.