4crests - 3:26 pm on Oct 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

Cabbie...

I think you are misunderstanding me.

The page that has replaced mine IS MY PAGE. In this case, the affiliate did not build his own page that ranks better. It is just a tracking URL that i give to some of my affiliates. It just forwards them to certain pages of my website, and tracks it so i can pay them. For some of my pages, Google has replaced my normal website URL with the tracking URL for the affiliate. The affiliate in this case doesn't have any way to change the page to make it rank higher.

I have worked very hard over the years to have my pages rank high in Google so i can get a fair amount of "FREE" traffic. It hurts to see my URL's replaced with the tracking URL's, which i have to pay a 16% commission on. I'm sure it thrills my affiliates, but not me.

Here is an example.

when i search for "Blue Widgets", my site used to come up in the #8 position in Google as such:

[shop.store.yahoo.com...]

Now, it is showing one of my affiliate tracking URL's as such:

[shop.store.yahoo.com...] clink?bluewidgets+zP4hqE+index.html

They are both the identical page on my site. Previously, Google has been able to tell the difference, and has kept my affiliate tracking URL's out of the index, but something has recently changed.

I guess I'm going to have to change how my affiliate program works, and cancel all affiliate tracking links.