Amazon linking techniques

According to onfocus, Amazon has changed the way they link to wishlists, breaking current wishlist links in the process. I believe (after checking my code) that TypePad is using the correct form of link, but you may want to check your code to be sure!

Disclaimer: All link examples in the following quotes have been altered to use my Wishlist ID and Amazon Associates codes.

Public Service Announcement: If you link to your Amazon Wish List on your site, you may need to change that link. I’ve noticed that standard Wish List links are not working lately—but you won’t know whether or not it’s working if you have the Amazon cookie.

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To link directly to your Wish List so others can see it, change wishlist in the URL to registry, like so:

http://amazon.com/o/registry/1P4IU0ESEJFTS

Later in the comments, this interesting tidbit of information was posted:

I stumbled across a post in the AWS discussion boards that basically said this was the officially good way to do a wishlist link (because it also includes your associates tag):

http://amazon.com/o/redirect?tag=[ASSOCIATETAG]&path=registry/[WISHLISTID]

All this reminded me of an important note from Jason Kottke regarding linking to items on Amazon with your Amazon Associates ID from last February:

I’ve noticed lately that when I browse items at Amazon, the URLs now take one of two forms:

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684868768/ http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684868768/

The former URL style has been around for some time, but the latter is relatively new. If you’re an Amazon Associate, the proper way of linking to an individual item (per their linking guide) is to append your Associate code (mine is “0sil8”) to the first URL style, like so:

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684868768/djwudicom-20

But if you run across an item at Amazon with the second type of URL, this won’t work:

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684868768/djwudicom-20

Good tips all, and worth keeping in mind.