Google against Affiliate Banners?

[internetheaven]

I have four sites that were built without ads for the first six months of their lives. For the last four months before adding ads, they averaged:

Site 1: 9000 visitors
Site 2: 1500 visitors
Site 3: 6000 visitors
Site 4: 7500 visitors

Last month, I added Adsense to 2 of them and Affiliate Banners (CJ) to the other 2. Last month's traffic:

Site 1: 4113 visitors
Site 2: 427 visitors
Site 3: 6555 visitors
Site 4: 6901 visitors

Guess which 2 were (nofollowed) CJ Affiliate ads and which 2 were Adsense ads?

[agent_x]

In the Google search quality rating guidelines pdf that was floating around not so long ago, CJ affiliate links were held up as an example of a sneaky redirect. But I don't recall seeing anyone come up with a reasonable explanation as to why.

[cr1t1calh1t]

Were the Adsense ads and CJ Affiliate links added site-wide, or added to a single page or very targeted selection of pages?

I have been considering adding some affiliate links to some of my sites, but I've been reluctant to do it because of reading about experiences like this.

One thing I've considered doing is adding the affiliate links and banners, but doing so using an adserver like DBC for Publishers or Mediaplex, so that the banner is served by a third-party javascript ad tag, so that it might look like a third-party advertiser instead of a "sneaky redirect".

I know this debate about Google's serp treatment of sites running affiliate links is controversial, but I think its important to keep it going, with as much data as possible.

cr1t1calh1t

[internetheaven]

Were the Adsense ads and CJ Affiliate links added site-wide, or added to a single page or very targeted selection of pages?

They are information/forum sites and ads were added to all information pages and forum pages. One ad, square banner, left column and above the fold for both adsense and CJ banner.

I'm using javascript for the CJ banner which is the same as Adsense. So the only thing is that Google doesn't like CJ's linking method? Surely if that were the case, they would announce it? CJ have hundreds of thousands of websites signed up to them.