Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
That affiliate is earning commissions due to an error by Google. Is there anything I can do?
[edited by: ciml at 10:01 am (utc) on June 7, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]
There is no error. www.example.com/?AID=23755 and www.example.com are different URLs, and many Web sites use URLs like these to serve different pages.
Google will merge the URLs (including PageRank and backlinks) if the content is 100% the same. Usually, Google will retain the one that would have highest PageRank if they were separate. The other will not be listed unless the URLs demerge. Confusion arises when the URLs start again to be listed separately due to the content differing, while the URLs' backlinks and PageRank continue to be merged.
If the URLs return slightly different content, or if the page changes and Googlebot fetches different content at different times, then Google will not merge them. Usually, Google will retain the one that would have highest PageRank if they were separate.
> Is there anything I can do?
The answer given by affiliates who understand the process is that the URL with the affiliate link is the best linked, so the merchant ought to pay for the Google traffic that is due substantially to the affiliate.
The answer given by merchants who understand the process is that the affiliate landing URL should be redirected (with HTTP status 301) to the merchant URL in the hope that the link is applied to the merchant; or that the affiliate URL should be robots excluded, either using /robots.txt or the META robots tag based on the URL using SSI or whatever.
There are lots of strong links to example.com/?AFFID=12345
There are just a few to example.com/
Which would you (as an automatic search engine) guess was the 'main' site, having found that they both have the same data.
It would be a fair bet that the one with all the links would be more important.
What you should be doing is immediately giving a 301 redirect from the?AFFID page to the example.com page, setting a cookie as you go.
Of course, if you did that to an affiliate who is in the know, then he would replace his links to your site with a more amenable merchant and you would lose your postion in the serps due to that affiliates backlinks and anchor text.
I still fail to fathom why merchants expect to have their cake and eat it to.
Let the merchants do what they do best and supply the goods and the affiliate does what he does best and supply the customers.
I find it hard to belive that www.example.com?AID=23755 has more links to it than www.example.com. After all who other than the affiliate links to ww.example.com?AID=23755 (his PR is the same as mine); where as www.example.com has links from Yahoo directory, Dmoz, and hundreds of others.
Let the merchants do what they do best and supply the goods and the affiliate does what he does best and supply the customers.
I this case Google is supplying the traffic, because of the indexed URL. The affiliate supplies the traffic when someone clicks on my link on his page and comes to my site.
Shall I create an index2.htm and tell him to link to that instead of the homepage?
2) Google can screw up and pick the wrong URL. They do this all the time.
Beyond that, you should never have affiliates link to the main page. Send them to an internal page and you'll never have this problem, except of course when the internal page does definitelt have more link power than the main page... but if that becaomes the case, just change the page affiliate links to. Very simple fixes to this problem.
and thanks for the solution.
Also, changing the page affiliate should link to is very annoying to affiliates. They have to go to all their sites and change the links. Before they change all their links, they lose money. Try not to do anything to make life hard for them.
Anyway will let you know the reaction after we ask him
Most people are affiliates for the rather odd purpose of trying to make money. And now that he is set up to start making more money, you come along and tell him that since he is making too much money, you don't like that because he is now cutting into your direct sales.
You are changing the rules in the middle of the game.
He is not concerned with your income, but you should certainly be concerned with his. When he makes sales, so do you. If you make a direct sale, he makes nothing.
If he takes his affiliate traffic elsewhere, he makes sales, your competitor makes sales, and you lose sales.
Of course, none of this is certain, but you really must look at it from their point of view before you decide that they have nothing to get upset about.
If such an affiliate were to instead have its own landing page on the parent site that it aims a ton of link power to, that would be somewhat different, but still affiliate terms and conditions will certainly cover such an issue.
"You are changing the rules in the middle of the game."
That's absurd. No affiliate agreements says "we will give you the exact same link for all eternity".
And it is still changing the rules in the middle of the game, even if there is nothing inthe agreement that bans it. Professional sports leagues change rules all the time to even the playing field if one player becomes to dominant. They are allowed to, just as Namaste is allowed to. That doesn't mean that you aren't changing the rules.
If you want them as an affiliate for you, you should take that into account that they might just see that as a rule change targeted at them.
If, as Namaste says, they have the same or slightly higher PageRank, then their link coming into the site is a rather important link. How much do those links count towards the site's ranking in the search engines? Do you want them signing up with your competitor instead?
In my case the affiliate whose ID appears on Google, is probably there by mistake, rather than by grand design. We know this guy well and have a good realtionship with him.
I compleely agree that genuine affiliates won't mind. I am not sure how an affiliate can consciously optimize his pages such that Google would give prefrence to www.Sample.com?aid=12345 over www.sample.com. The only way it could happen is that the affiliate has gone and bought some hi-power PR links on various sites with links to www.sample.com?aid=12345. If that is the case, there might be some merit in allowing this extreme form of revenue generation. But I don't think that is the case.
The above point brings to debate whether these forms of extreme practices are to be allowed. That is entirely upto the policy and nature of the program. They have benefits, and affiliate managers may choose to design their programs to encourage/disallow these practices. In our case, our program T & C dates back to 2001, and we are silent on whether this is allowed. However, like I said above, this has occured through a Google error and now we are taking steps to prevent losses from this.
I reacall there was some discussion on this sometime back and the general opinion was that G dicounts PR gain from affiliate links, AND, filters out affiliate links from SERPS
"And it is still changing the rules in the middle of the game"
This makes no sense. WHAT rule? What affiliate terms and conditions say that they will never change URLs? I've never seen any like that. T&Cs say the parent gives the affiliate a URL to link to (and can terminate all association too anytime but that's different). That is the rules. The parent can assign any link it wants. No rule is being changed. Changing a URL is directly in conformance with the rules.
This, frankly, is plain stupid. In many cases a site will not rank at all without the affiliate links coming in. My affiliate ID was #2 for a big money keyword for 2 years, and let me promise you, the website was more than pleased to rake in the cash and pay me my affiliate money. If they didn't, I would have simply remove my links and their ranking would plummet.
I did have an affiliate relationship where they decided they wanted all the money for themselves and thought they'd rank just as well without me. Well, they aren't, and I'm working with another online store who is more than happy to work with me to make the big bucks.
Put a robots.txt that blocks google, and submit www.example.com/?aff=12345 or whatever it is.
Didn't some people do this when Google started accidentally indexing 302 redirect links to sites instead of the site itself?
The url types to remove would have been othersite.com/redir/?1234... urls with web addresson another domain.
Well not necessarily, which is the point of the thread.
Hmm, is that the point of Namastes thread?
He said "alongside his site in googles serps".
So we assume the surfer has typed in a kw to find the results.Now the kw may be the name of Namaste's site but That is fair game for anyone.If Namaste's site name is cheapname.com and a surfer types in 'cheapname', then its open season on that term.
If he types in 'cheapname.com' then google will only show 1 result.
What matters is if the webmaster will feel mad and/or cheated. Think of it like "the customer is always right". Can you afford to lose this affiliate? Can you afford all the keyword rich backlinks they give? You must analyze that.
You say you have a good relationship with that affiliate, which makes things easier. Talk to them about this matter and see how they react.
My concern here is that accusations such as "wrong URL" and "bug" are pejorative and highly misleading.
> question: isn't G meant to filter out AID, AFFID, etc in links to prevent this kind of thing happening?
Nope. Googlebot is less inclined to fetch URLs with?id= but I don't remember seeing anything about AID or AFFID.
> general opinion was that G dicounts PR gain from affiliate links, AND, filters out affiliate links from SERPS
There isn't a one size fits all approach. Affiliate links can work through HTTP redirects, landing URLs, META refresh pages or even HTTP 'referer'.
I do think steveb hit the nail on the head with "the issue here is a canonical listing being replaced by the affiliate tag". The problem is that the canonical nature of the URL in question is only so because of Namaste's motive in choosing it. As frup points out, Google chose a different listing to be canonical in their index.
One URL is canonical in Namaste's business model; another is canonical in Google.
I have the impression that the supposed "mistake" is that Google didn't canonicalise the affiliate Id URL under the non-affiliate Id URL?
>>but the issue here is a canonical listing being replaced by the affiliate tag.Hmm, is that the point of Namastes thread?
yes, it is.
