Does Google prefer affiliate links or affiliate content?

[iam david lee]

Hi all

I have a site with lot of unique content but i am selling affiliate products, I am not sure which of the following is good in googles eyes:

1) Have affiliates content(duplicate) with noindex, and have a form to goto affiliate site, or

2) Have nofollow in the link and have a page which redirects to affiliate site to view the product details rather than have a duplicate copy of the content on my site...

Any help will be good...

Thanks

David

[tedster]

You'll do much better with your own unique content - so forget the first option. You may be interested in this thread about affilate sites: Avoiding penalties against "thin affiliate" pages [webmasterworld.com] - with comments from Google's Adam Lasnik.

If you duplicate the affilate-supplied content on your site, you'll be lucky to get a trickle of organic search traffic to those pages.

[iam david lee]

thank you for the reply...

i do have lot of hnique content but just worried about linking to affiliate sites...

[tedster]

Then Adam's comments in the thread I linked to should put you at ease.

- If a site provides compelling information, entertainment, or tools and is then sprinkled (reasonably) with affiliate links, then it's likely to do well over time.

- If a site *starts* with affiliate links as the foundation, the chances for success are more slim *unless* it provides compelling info, entertainment, tools, etc.