Can affiliates using JavaScript redirects cause a penalty?

[mthomas209]

I manage a large in-house affiliate network and I have noticed a few of our affiliates ranking well for very competitive terms with free hosted sites that just use JavaScript redirects to our landing pages or homepage. I have no issue with this and welcome the business but am concerned we might be penalized for the actions of these affiliates and the way they are redirecting to our domain. These sites are obviously throw away domains that are using black hat techniques to rank and they don't really offer any value other than as a doorway to our site. Is this something we should be concerned with? Anyone have any experience with this situation?

[mthomas209]

anybody?

[jomaxx]

IMO yes. Googleguy specifically warned webmasters not to use quick Javascript redirects a couple of months ago. Maybe an affiliate program situation would escape a penalty, maybe not.

[mthomas209]

thanks jomaxx

[jomaxx]

Check the Google News forum for more on this sort of thing, especially:

If you're seeing a directory from your site go away, the only new factor I'd check for is doorway pages with javascript redirects. Google has been getting better at detecting that lately.

[webmasterworld.com ]

[ska_demon]

I can vouch for the fact that javascript redirects are harmful. I built a site about 4 years ago with about 10000 pages of garbled but keyword rich content. The pages were specifically designed to rank for 1 keyword. All of the pages used a redirect to my homepage which housed all of the advertising and affiliate stuff. It worked brilliantly for about 4 months. The site turned over a large amount of traffic and made enough money.

Then...BAM it was gone. Penalised by all the SE's. Google still lists all the pages but i get 1 or 2 visitors a day now compared to 2000 when the site was first created.

I would imagine that anybody using a throw away domain that redirects to your site will have a detremental effect on your site. One thing to consider is 'do your affiliates bring you enough trade to support you if your site gets penalised by your affiliates actions?'

If not, it may be an idea to ban the use of redirects.

Ska

[mthomas209]

Thanks for you input ska_demon.
Sounds like we probably need to prohibit our affiliates from using redirects all together.

The only thing I wonder is how the search engines can issue a penalty for this type of thing. Couldn't someone just setup these types of doorway page sites and redirect to a competitor site, ultimately hurting their rankings on purpose? Seems like it would be an easy way to sabotage your competitors.

[ska_demon]

You are right that this could be used to harm competitors sites. I suppose if you can prove to the SE's that you do not own or are not affiliated with any of the offending sites (ip ranges, whois etc)they may switch the penalty off. Trouble is you ARE affiliated with these sites and have requested that they send you traffic by any means which sort of drops you in the doo doo. If you ban redirects you may have a case to have your site reinstated.

The other thing is that you may NOT get penalised/caught.

So, the risk of losing profitable traffic by banning redirects could be costly if you don't get caught.

Heh heh but how will you know? If you ban redirects you lose traffic. If you get penalised, you lose traffic.

Its a conundrum I know ;oP

You need to figure what risk is best for your company, being penalised/banned or losing affiliate traffic.

Ska

[letmefly]

I know nothing about that