Amazon Links

I’m having the same problem with both Amazon links and YouTube links.

I found a temporary workaround for my problem, maybe this thread can help, if you are comfortable editing the plugin’s core code:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/amazon-affiliate-4/#post-12511411

• This reply was modified 4 years, 12 months ago by Sean. Reason: Punctuation

Thank you for that information.

Hi @carymillsap

I hope you’re well today and thank you for reporting this!

The 503 HTTP status should indicate that the serverice is “temporarily unavailable” and usually that means that the “target” is temporarily overloaded or down. It might also happen if the connection to it is “poor” but it seems that some providers also throw it instead of other statuses – simply in all cases when service is or is not expected to be available (e.g. when a “bot”/”automated” type of traffic is detected). it’s not a valid way of using 503 but it happens.

I’m not saying that Amazon is doing that exactly but it’s hard to believe that all that time those target URLs are indeed unavailable. Unfortunately, some sites (a “big players” especially) do put some limitations on the way their URLs/links can be utilized/accessed.

The solution suggested by @sean-h earlier is a nice workaround (even though it’s never recommended to edit core files of the plugin) for now but it’s worth noting that it actually only “tricks” plugin to consider 503 status as a “good” status. It will also affect other links so if any link is genuinely unavailable due to that status it won’t also be marked as broken.

That being said, we already have Amazon integration on the future features list so once implemented it will use Amazon API which should solve the issue once and for good. We’re also looking into improvements of YouTube API integration to be able to handle YoutTube links reliably and without limitations as well.

Kind regards,
Adam

Adam, thank you very much for that response.

@adam,

Thank you too for the clarification. Like I say, this is a very valuable plugin, unless you don’t have any links in your website. At least I’d like to see a decent website that doesn’t have any links.

I have been fiddling/dabbling with WordPress for going on 5 years now and I think this is maybe the second time I have modified a file like this. The first time I did I brought my whole site down with a classic 500. So yes, I have done it now with extreme caution, and nothing crashed this time:-)

As far as Amazon goes, which are the only links that have ever thrown a 503 on my site, I think they are doing this on purpose, because days later the same link is still showing as a 503, which doesn’t seem temporary to me. However, I also have a theory as to why this happens. Imagine hundreds of thousands of websites pinging Amazon servers but never actually browsing and buying anything. It does seem like a waste of resources, so I don’t really blame them. We just need to find a permanent fix, maybe through some kind of API which we as site owners/publishers sign up for, which in turns tells Amazon that it is in fact a verified publisher just checking in and not some dodgy bot.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 12 months ago by Sean. Reason: added more info
• This reply was modified 4 years, 12 months ago by Sean.

I meant to add that not all our Amazon links are showing a 503. We have several hundred, but not all of them are showing this error.

Hi @sean-h

As far as Amazon goes, which are the only links that have ever thrown a 503 on my site, I think they are doing this on purpose, because days later the same link is still showing as a 503, which doesn’t seem temporary to me. However, I also have a theory as to why this happens. Imagine hundreds of thousands of websites pinging Amazon servers but never actually browsing and buying anything. It does seem like a waste of resources, so I don’t really blame them. We just need to find a permanent fix, maybe through some kind of API

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I got same feelings and thoughts about that.

The good news is that we are actually already looking to implement some sort of a “permanent” solution which will be based on API so that should do the trick in a long run. I’m honestly not sure about ETA as that’s not the only improvement/fix for the plugin that we got on a list but it is being “looked into” to be implemented with one of future updates.

Best regards,
Adam

Hi Adam,

Looking forward to the updates! What would be even better is being able to detect when Amazon removes a particular product, because they don’t simply do that. They replace it with or redirect it to a page of puppies, no jokes, so it is not actually seen as a 404. It then goes on to offer visitors other products. So I’m not sure how such could be automatically detected, but if it was, and there was a price attached, I would seriously consider it.

Regards,

Sean H.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zarastone/2017/05/02/amazons-404-error-pages-are-pup-licious/