GoogleBot and Affiliate links

[JeremyL]

With the whole Florida update many people are wondering how to keep thier mainly informational site from being tagged as a money maker and get hit. I have seen debate on whether affiliate links on a site will as of now or later on down the road cause it to be tagged.

In the interest of being safe and not sorry I have been looking into ways of not feeding GBot affiliate links. I don't want to get into complicated cloaking but I'm not sure there is any other way around it. How are other people who are thinking along the same lines as me dealing with the situation?

Also just to clarify, do any SE bots accept and store cookies for spidering a site?

Thanks
Jeremy

[plasma]

Also just to clarify, do any SE bots accept and store cookies for spidering a site?

Nope

[nativenewyorker]

JeremyL,

I doubt that Google and the other search engines will drop all sites that have affiliate links. You are making the assumption that everyone is on the Internet searching for information. The reality is that many people are searching for products and not information. How useful would Goolge be to these users by dropping all the product pages?

It is however possible that Google will be more stringent with regards to duplicate content.

Ted