NATS linking question
 

Perhaps this is a silly question, but I've gone back and forth on this for awhile and never asked so as not to show my ignorance.

When linking to many sites and galleries, especially those using NATS, the url often gets changed.
example: http://join.firstclasspov.com/galler...jI4MzYuMC4wLjA gets directed to http://galleries.firstclasspov.com/c...jI4MzYuMC4wLjA

Part of me says to use the link that you are given, but then I also think that the latter link may have a better chance of getting indexed (at least by any engine that doesn't strip off everything after the first boolean character) as it is the page you ultimately end up on.

I would be interested to know what others might think is the best approach.

Not using the link you are given will cause problems. The most obvious of which would be the cookie not being set before the redirect is done. Tracking will still work to associate the sale for you, but the hit will not be counted, referring URL will not be known, advanced tracking will not work, etc.

I'm far from an expert but, the join.website or secure.website in a nats link is a DNS alias that gets redirected by nats to wherever the actual tour is. (usually in the progam's nats install)

I have been told that because these are redirects they don't count as backlinks for serps, and I think it is better not to help your sponsors rank, since you don't get paid for their SE traffic.

I've almost the same question