18 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
18 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Do Affiliate links affects SERPS?

by rvrabel2002
15 replies
Does anyone know for a fact that affiliate links get you penalized by Google? I have a site that I want to do this for, but don't want to lose rankings.

Now I know that its better to cloak them for various reasons, but i'm not sure if it will screw up tracking and don't want to lose sales. Anyone with experience in this? Thanks.

Robert
#affects #affiliate #links #serps
  • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
    Affiliate links do not hurt or help your rankings. I don't know where you
    heard this, but it's total misinformation.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709761].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
      Just running searches, you find so many opinions it hard to discern truth from reality. Thanks Steven
      Signature

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709782].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author myfreelance
      Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim View Post

      Affiliate links do not hurt or help your rankings. I don't know where you
      heard this, but it's total misinformation.
      Thanks for you opinion now I can finally put my thoughts to rest because just like the thread started I wanted to do the same for my site.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1720165].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Zeus66
    Not so fast there, Wagsy! You ever tested that? I have. Now, it's definitely possible that I'm confusing a correlation with cause-and-effect, which is very common when analyzing something as complex as rankings, but I do think I see a bit of a relationship between number of outbound affiliate links and rankings. I cloak all of mine now for that very reason. Well, most of them, not all, because that's too many pages to fix.

    Before any of you starts sucker punching me, test this yourselves. I use PHP redirects to cloak, not the domain-level 301 you can set up with your registrar, by the way. I've not tested it using the registrar type of redirect.

    John
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709786].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
      Originally Posted by Zeus66 View Post

      Not so fast there, Wagsy! You ever tested that? I have. Now, it's definitely possible that I'm confusing a correlation with cause-and-effect, which is very common when analyzing something as complex as rankings, but I do think I see a bit of a relationship between number of outbound affiliate links and rankings. I cloak all of mine now for that very reason. Well, most of them, not all, because that's too many pages to fix.

      Before any of you starts sucker punching me, test this yourselves. I use PHP redirects to cloak, not the domain-level 301 you can set up with your registrar, by the way. I've not tested it using the registrar type of redirect.

      John
      I've been doing affiliate marketing for 7 years and yes, tested. I can see
      no true effect. Again, I can only go by my own experience but you are
      right...everybody should test this for themselves, but I see no disadvantage
      other than, in the MMO niche, you'll get your link jacked big time...but that
      has nothing to do with rankings.

      Of course most of the stuff I promote now is outside of MMO and so I
      don't have to worry about that stuff.

      Having said all that, I'll cloak a link IF I have a domain already setup that
      will provide me with a better result than just sending people to the sales
      page directly.

      But with the ridiculous number of affiliate products I promote, there is no
      way in hell I'm going out to get domains for each one of them, and redirecting
      from my steve wagenheim domain does nothing for me SEO wise, so why
      use it?

      As you said, test and see how YOUR mileage varies.

      But for me...affiliate links haven't done a darn thing one way or another.

      And that's after 7 years of dealing with Clickbank.
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709821].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author halfpoint
      Originally Posted by Zeus66 View Post

      Not so fast there, Wagsy! You ever tested that? I have. Now, it's definitely possible that I'm confusing a correlation with cause-and-effect, which is very common when analyzing something as complex as rankings, but I do think I see a bit of a relationship between number of outbound affiliate links and rankings. I cloak all of mine now for that very reason. Well, most of them, not all, because that's too many pages to fix.

      Before any of you starts sucker punching me, test this yourselves. I use PHP redirects to cloak, not the domain-level 301 you can set up with your registrar, by the way. I've not tested it using the registrar type of redirect.

      John
      I'm with you on this one.

      I cloak all of my affiliate links with a basic html redirect and also make them nofollow.

      I haven't done any definitive testing because it would take too long and I'm pretty lazy but doing it this way helps keep my mind at ease.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1720308].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
        I think people worry too much. We're in this to make money and if doing so means dropped ranking then it doesn't matter where you are in the search engines anyway. If Google wanted to ban or filter every site with a financial interest then they themselves will be out of business. A site is either crap or informative and useful, stick to the latter and it's the best you can do, if that's not good enough then what does it matter, find a different busines model.

        Incidentally, I personally have not only found affiliate links to have no effect, I have one page on a site that is ranking far better than it should do. I'm big on testing and although I can't confirm it, I'm almost sure it's the aff links that have ranked me high, so there's a contradiction!
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1720346].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Paleochora
      Originally Posted by Zeus66 View Post

      Not so fast there, Wagsy! You ever tested that? I have. Now, it's definitely possible that I'm confusing a correlation with cause-and-effect, which is very common when analyzing something as complex as rankings, but I do think I see a bit of a relationship between number of outbound affiliate links and rankings. I cloak all of mine now for that very reason. Well, most of them, not all, because that's too many pages to fix.

      Before any of you starts sucker punching me, test this yourselves. I use PHP redirects to cloak, not the domain-level 301 you can set up with your registrar, by the way. I've not tested it using the registrar type of redirect.

      John
      I don't know whether they are harmful or not. In fact I don't think anyone here (unless they moonlight as a top level Google executive) knows 100% one way or the other.

      With this I go down the route of 'better safe than sorry' and as it only takes a couple of seconds to create html pages for affiliate links with profit protector, I'll continue to do it.
      Signature
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1795818].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author blackcat123
    Your thought is totally wrong. You have certainly misunderstood it.
    Signature

    Yet To Come....

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709802].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author rvrabel2002
    I have even heard that affiliate cloaking can negatively affect SERPS...Kind of afraid to even test it out
    Signature

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709811].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
    Questions like this are so hard to get a definitive answer on and it seems that everyone has a dogmatic belief and fall into one camp or the other ... we all need to find out for ourselves I guess.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1709960].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Burtgummer
      They definitely affect Adwords quality scores. I have 2 pages up, 1 with affiliate links, 1 with php redirects. The one with affiliate links has 3-5 QS, whereas the page with php redirects has all 7/10s.

      Now this is Adwords. I don't know if it is different or not for organic listings. It's still Google though, so I don't see why not.
      Signature

      “Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” -Nikola Tesla

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1720152].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author InternetMarketingIQ
    Any link of any type tells Google something about your site. What they choose to do with that information is subject to vast speculation. I've read that Matt Cutts suggests using a nofollow attribute on affiliate links.

    Clearly there is no reason to bump the ranking of a page up because of an affiliate link relationship either for the merchant or for the affiliate.

    Think about that for a moment. Take a popular Affiliate Program using Commission Junction. How many thousands of Affiliates are promoting a single big company site? Will a specific product rank higher because they have thousands of affiliate links pointing to their landing pages hosted by CJ?

    I have seen no evidence of this.

    The bottom line is if you are an Affiliate Marketer you use affiliate links.

    The only people who can definitively speak on this subject is Google.

    I use affiliate links on nearly all my sites... I'm an Affiliate Marketer. This is my job, full time and pays ALL my bills. I have no other job.

    And my sites still rank with all my affiliate links.

    Your best guide is to always do what makes sense for your visitors - make sites for people not computers.
    Signature
    Internet Marketing IQâ„¢
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1720177].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author guzie
    Here's Something that I've been trying to figure out. Maybe someone here knows the answer.

    When search engines bots crawl a web page and finds a nofollow attribute we all know that means stop do not follow this link. But does it stop there and shoot back to the next page or site without continuing through the end of the page.

    Sure would like an answer for this one?
    Paul
    Signature
    Start Your Own Blog Today - No Cost Blog Builder
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1795476].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author arttse
      Just to clarify...

      A nofollow tag means that google will not pass page rank to your site...it doesnt mean it will not crawl the link and not give you a backlink.

      If you want your links to look natural, then you should have links from no-follow webpages.



      Originally Posted by guzie View Post

      Here's Something that I've been trying to figure out. Maybe someone here knows the answer.

      When search engines bots crawl a web page and finds a nofollow attribute we all know that means stop do not follow this link. But does it stop there and shoot back to the next page or site without continuing through the end of the page.

      Sure would like an answer for this one?
      Paul
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1795532].message }}

Trending Topics