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If you have a lot of affiliate links on a page, do search engines penalize the entire site?

by Trankuility
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have several pages that I set to noindex.

I don't care about those pages getting ranked in search engines.

However, the information on those pages would be perfect to use with a bunch of Amazon affiliate links.

From what I've read, Google will penalize a page for having too many affiliate links. But does the rest of the site get penalized too?

Would love to add affiliate links to my noindex pages, as long as the rest of the site doesn't get screwed.
#affiliate #engines #entire #links #lot #page #penalize #search #site
  • Profile picture of the author Adrian Jock
    I don't know whether Google penalizes sites for having too many affiliate links or not, but adding the noindex tag to these pages is usually a bad choice. [Unless there's no real content and the page sucks. But if the page sucks, you don't need affiliate links anyway ]

    Instead of noindexing the pages, add the tag nofollow to your affiliate links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Matt Bard
    Google is always trying to make the user experience better and they constantly make adjustments to their search algorithms based on searched for content vs unrelated content and links. I Suppose it's possible.

    If they are starting to weed out sites that have too many affiliate links, I wouldn't be surprised. However, I think that it's highly unlikely.

    I agree with Adrian
    ...adding the noindex tag to these pages is usually a bad choice...
    if you have too many pages that have nothing to do with your site's keyword theme, nofollow them.
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  • Profile picture of the author Trankuility
    The reason I have those pages set to noindex is because they are for members only. Don't want them found by non-members.
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    • Profile picture of the author Adrian Jock
      Originally Posted by Trankuility View Post

      The reason I have those pages set to noindex is because they are for members only. Don't want them found by non-members.
      If they are for members only and don't want them found by non-members, it means that you have to make sure that

      1) they are password protected, or

      2) at least there's no link to them on any public page (and they are not included in your sitemaps). Including all these private pages in the same folder and then disallowing robots access via your robots.txt will help you.

      In both cases above, Googlebot won't visit these pages. If they aren't visited, it doesn't matter whether their content is according to Google's standards or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ilenia Internet Marketer
    Hi Trankuility

    From what I know Google would penalize you for too many affiliate links; changes in the tag "nofollow".
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    Moderators Note: Affiliate links are not allowed as signatures.

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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Originally Posted by Trankuility View Post


    From what I've read, Google will penalize a page for having too many affiliate links. But does the rest of the site get penalized too?
    That is something that no one has the real answer to.

    I would ask Google this question.

    Maybe you can find more info on this by Googling this question.
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  • Profile picture of the author Trankuility
    Ah ok, thank you. I did Google it but was unable to find a definitive answer. Thanks for the replies all!
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