Affiliate Sites & Google Rankings

[kidder]

Would it be fair comment to say that if your site runs affiliate links then its at a disadvantage in the organic results? I am drawing attention to this because I have some pretty clear cut evidence that one of our websites was just blacklisted in adwords because it contains affiliate links. If Google considers these sites as such low quality in the paid results then its not a big assumption that sooner or later they will figure out a way to slap the organic results with the same rule. In my case it was manual, the mountain view IP turned up on my stats, followed one exit link, returned to the site for one page view and within minutes I had the nasty email in front of me. And just to be clear my site has been running this way since 2003 using adwords and has in excess of 40,000 registered members. I can see quite a few sites running in the same space that are much thinner than ours!

[goodroi]

i dont think its fair to say affiliate links cause poor organic rankings.

i have been using affiliate links for over 10 years and my network of websites do very well in the organic world. many of my associates also do alot of affiliate work and they also perform well in organic.

it has been my experience that many affiliate sites are crap and that is why they dont rank well. they often lack significant & unique content. their link development is often rudementary. many affiliates dont even think about usability and miscellaneous quality signals that google is looking at.

i am not saying your website is crap. i am saying that too often other affiliates complain about poor organic rankings for a website that regurgitates an affiliate data feed already duplicated on 100 websites & think that 10 backlinks is more than enough.

i would suggest that other affiliates focus on building websites with valuable content that attracts users and just happens to have affiliate links instead of focusing on building a websites in the fastest time with the least amount of effort. if you build a good site with the right quality signals it will rank regardless of the presence of affiliate links.

[tigger]

it has been my experience that many affiliate sites are crap and that is why they dont rank well. they often lack significant & unique content. their link development is often rudementary. many affiliates dont even think about usability and miscellaneous quality signals that google is looking at

agree - all my sites are affiliate based, but have totally unique content written by myself and rank fine - true during G's playing around with the serps they are moving around but most are hold strong