Small case study in affiliate links

[woop01]

We've been marking a type of "blue widgets" for a company for a solid seven years. Their previous in-house affiliate program allowed direct linking to their products with just an affiliate ID attached to the end of the URL.

We ranked between #1-6 (most of the time 1-3) for that term since 2003, when we first started marketing for it. While there were a lot of affiliate programs for this type of widgets we were pretty much alone on the first page of results as far as pages that had nothing more than affiliate links go.

They recently switched to a second tier affiliate network that requires all links to be redirected through their tracking URL.

The site dropped off of the front page of the results within three days.

[internetheaven]

What's your question?

What you've stated seems a natural effect. How can we help?

[woop01]

Not really a question, just another observation of it controlled for everything but the affiliate network links.

[Planet13]

Just so I understand the situation a little clearer, I would like to rephrase:

Site A is an affiliate site that links to site B (the blue widgets site).

site A has enjoyed page one rankings for the keyword "blue widgets" since 2003.

Site A changed the URL format in the links to site B (without changing any other content on Site A).

Site A dropped off the first page of SERPs for keyword "Blue Widgets."

So the conclusion is that outbound links are a factor in ranking, as not even the anchor text changed for the outbound links.

Is that a correct summary?

Or are you saying that Site B (the Blue Widgets Site) dropped from page 1?

If it is the former, I would kindly like to ask how the original Site B "Blue widgets" site had ranked for the keywords blue Widgets, since before the change in affiliate URLs, they would have all those affiliate URLs linking to it.

[tedster]

As I understand it, the original type of link was a direct link with a tracking URL and then a switch was made to send the link through a tracking script. Because of the tracking script, there is no longer any link equity or Page Rank being voted to the parent site - and as a result its position in the SERPs dropped.

[Planet13]

@tedster

and as a result its position in the SERPs dropped.

I am still not clear on which "it" dropped in the SERPs...

1) The Affiliate Site?

Or

2) The Parent Site?

I could understand if it is the parent site because all the inbound links would change...

But when I read the original post, I thought he meant the Affiliate Site (that was linking out to the parent site) dropped in the SERPs, so maybe I misunderstood the situation...

[tedster]

Agreed - I may be confusing the "we" and "they" references, too. I hope woop01 can clarify.

[Jane_Doe]

we were pretty much alone on the first page of results as far as pages that had nothing more than affiliate links go....The site dropped off of the front page of the results within three days.

Well, welcome to the club. It is tough to get thin affiliate pages to rank these days, especially if they use uncloaked links from a known affiliate network. It is pretty easy to program to detect those.

Site with solid content with affiliate links can still rank just fine. It just takes more work.

[woop01]

Planet13, yes, your first summary is pretty accurate regarding what I'm saying. Sorry about not being clear, perhaps this will be better.

-Affiliate site (us)
-Merchant
-Affiliate Network

Until two weeks ago...

Affiliate site linked directly to product pages on Merchants site via www.merchant.com/?affid=#*$!x. Page has ranked between 1-6 for a term with a ton of Adwords competition for about seven years.

"Affiliate site" always outranked the merchant for this term due to a large amount of other SEO reasons.

Two weeks ago...

Merchant switched their affiliate program to a network instead of in house. Links are now to www.affilaitenetwork.com/redirect=#*$!xx for tracking. The only thing that changed on the page was the destination URLs. Within three days the ranking was lost.

In the interest of full disclosure, it's not like this will put us out of business or anything, we only make about 2% of our income off of affiliate stuff. Our site just had a ton of contextual relevance to that type of widgets so we used that to promote the page I'm speaking of.

[mrguy]

Could you not mask the affiliate link and just redirect it to the correct site after the click?

Masking affiliate links is pretty common.

[woop01]

One more correction on the above, I only referenced the Adwords competition as a measuring stick, I'm speaking of organic.

[jimbeetle]

Could you not mask the affiliate link and just redirect it to the correct site after the click?

It was the direct links to the sponsor site that appeared to bolster the rankings. The redirect through the affiliate manager site, effectively masking the destination, is what appeared to kill the rankings.

[mrguy]

It was the direct links to the sponsor site that appeared to bolster the rankings. The redirect through the affiliate manager site, effectively masking the destination, is what appeared to kill the rankings.

So, set the mask to look like it's going to the Merchant site, then 302 the redirect.

It's worth a shot.

[Planet13]

Wow...

@woop1

Our site just had a ton of contextual relevance to that type of widgets so we used that to promote the page I'm speaking of.

How many pages total were on your site? did they all link to the manufacturers site? About how many links did you have per page to the Merchant's site?

So basically we can surmise that OUTBOUND URLs can have a significant influence on SERPs (regardless of the anchor text used in the outbound links).

We still don't know though what might be the main influence though: Whether it is the destination (google "trusts" the Merchant site more than the Affiliate Network site), or whether it is because of the TEXT that was in the URLs has changed.

You would have to think that google might devalue a page if it sees outbound links to a well-known third-party affiliate program though..

[woop01]

It’s not a traditional content or affiliate site. Technically, there are a couple million pages (between the forums, user profiles, other user pages, etc.) on the site but that’s because it’s more of an interactive site within the same industry as the widgets in question. There was only one page on the site that had the actual affiliate links.

However, every page on the site includes a link to the page with the affiliate links using the anchor text “blue widgets”. That “blue widgets” keyword is what we ranked well for and what drove traffic to the affiliate page.

The URL of the merchant did not include the words the widgets ranked for so changing the URLs from the merchant to the affiliate redirect wouldn’t have impacted it based on that as far as I can tell.

It might be of worth noting that we are still golden in Bing/Yahoo.

Regarding masking, I tend to shy away from those sorts of things. While I’d like to keep the ranking for the term we’re speaking of, risking penalties that would hurt the main focus of the site simply isn’t worth it. This was more of an observation than a request for help.

[tedster]

I did misunderstand - sorry about that. Your site ranked well while the side running the affiliate program had you using direct affiliate links, including affiliate ID.

Then lost your rankings after the program changed and you were required to send your links through a redirect script.

[woop01]

Correct.

[scooterdude]

looks like the google algo has that url patern locked in, with a programmed negative response where found,

ergo , you was okay till your link to the merchant matched a particular profile, then ,,,

[mhansen]

I agree... It sounds like:

- You used to link to site abc, which was a good site, manufacturer, well respected, below the affiliate-link radar.

- Now you link to shareasale, or some other known affiliate manager, therefore you are a classified as a thin affiliate site, until further notice.

On that note... I have a site that has 2-3 affiliate links behind a url-mask, called /goto/thislink. I have the /goto/ directory blocked in robots.txt, but it makes no difference, Google still reports them (url only) in a site:command.com search.

Masked links only fool ourselves I think. Heck, Google knows all... surely they know a redirect that passes through "thisknownaffiliatetrackingsite.com" is still an affiliate link. Filters... in place.

M