Affiliate program ruins natural rankings?

[internetheaven]

I was with one of the top UK affiliate marketing firms for one of my legal sites. The program was due to close on the 20th of this month so affiliates have been removing links to my site for the past few weeks.

Strangely, all of sudden our rankings on regular search engines (mainly Google) have started to rise. As far as I'm aware there hasn't been a recent big update or backlinks surge this month so the only change I can think of is that there aren't hundreds of affiliate links pointing to my site.

Could my affiliate program links have been hurting me in the SERPS?

[tolachi]

How did your affiliates link to you? I've had an experience where a higher pr affiliate linked directly to me and ended up ranking higher than me for a few terms.

[GerBot]

It would be very interesting if it did bit i doubt it.

Inbound links can't reduce your ranking or your SEO competition would be linking to you with bad sites.