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Google Analytics -Affiliate Killer??

by alashton
16 replies
  • SEO
    • |
According to Gregg Jacobs( Wp mage fame) his no.1 rule for affiliate sites is never - not ever use goolgle analytics as your rankings will suffer and maybe even get de-indexed. Could this be true?

Well I have had a site up for over 9 months, followed Affilorama Blueprint to the letter actually, good content, SEO, links, the whole nine yards but it is nowhere to be seen on Google and never has been. However it ranks quite well in Bing and Yahoo.

Maybe he's right! :confused:
#affiliate #analytics #google #killer
  • Profile picture of the author ShaneRQR
    Smells of rumor. I'd like to hear some other people's input on this, however.
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    • Profile picture of the author cdhartpence
      ??

      I don't understand how or why this would be true...I mean...let's say you have a page that's ranking in google...you drop an affiliate link on it and...?

      Google flags it with negative link juice and drops you?

      *shrugs*

      I mean, technically it's possible I guess, but I can't see why Google would want to do this. There are some well respected sites with affiliate programs. It seems like this would be an indirect slap to all of them, and to an entire business model.

      I'm not buying it (plus, I have affiliate links on a number of my well ranking sites), and I use analytics on all of my stuff.

      -=Vel=-
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      • Profile picture of the author TheWinner
        Simply put... Rubbish

        I have sites rank highly in Google and I use Google Analytics.

        GA is one of the best tracking software, in my opinion.

        If the site is not getting indexed, you should investigate your SEO of the site in a bit more detail, maybe you are missing certain things.

        If I listened to every rumour that goes by and let it affect me, I would not even have a website full stop lol.

        Investigate everything in detail first, if you don't want to use GA because you think it is harming you, use something else. But I very much doubt this is the case.

        Cheers
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    • Profile picture of the author TelegramSam
      It would certainly appear to be the best way to let google know what you were up to.

      Probably not a good thing if there were many similar sites or they contained non-original content.

      It's a bit like waving a red flag at a bull.

      Sam
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  • Profile picture of the author banless
    GA has nothing to do with rankings as far as I know, I use it on a few sites and have never had any problems. You may want to look at the way your site is optimized, google's algo is alot different from yahoo and bing so rankings will always be different on each search engine. The only thing that you can do is remove GA to see if this really the reason why you are struggling in google. But again, I don't think it has anything to do with GA.
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    • Profile picture of the author igorb
      Originally Posted by banless View Post

      ... The only thing that you can do is remove GA to see if this really the reason why you are struggling in google. ...
      I agree.
      However, I would rather like to see reversed situation.
      It would be more useful to have another affiliate site without GA and monitor/compare its position after implementation of GA.
      That would show us more reliable results.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sylonious
    I don't trust Google with my info either. However, I did use Google analytics for quite some time without any problems.

    I will say this though. It's hard for me to see how using Google Analytics is a smart idea when you are trying to "manipulate" their search engine rankings with grey hat (or even white hat) SEO.

    Their job is to keep you from doing that.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jeff S
    Personally I think this is bad info (nothing against Gregg). Your rankings don't suffer from using Google Analytics at all, and Google would more likely "slap" you into their sandbox by looking at your backlinks which they already know about without regardless if you're using GA or not.

    If you still prescribe to the conspiracy theory, then you can use Yahoo's newer analytic tool, Woopra, or any of the other dozens of tracking tools out there.
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    • Profile picture of the author LIndaB
      I think all of you are missing the context of Greg's statement about Google Analytics. You are talking about sites with unique content. Mage sites don't use unique content, similar to some types of autoblogging. So putting them where Google may look more closely is probably not a good idea.
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  • Profile picture of the author Beldin
    I've always used GA and get mixed results in rankings... I'd base that on my ability not GA.
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  • Profile picture of the author InternetMarketingIQ
    That's good to know. He must really be on to something. Because I use Google Analytics on most of my sites and some how they are still ranking just fine. He must really know his stuff.

    Most of these "experts"... are less than qualified to make these statements ... because they are based on nothing.

    What possible valid reason would Google have to imply any kind of penalty for feeding them free data? If all the sites were suddenly penalized don't you think that REAL sites who use the service would be falling by the way side?

    Analytics is your ticket to figuring out what is working and what is not working and make the necessary adjustments.

    If your assertion were true as soon as anyone used Google Analytics all they would see is falling traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author cagliostro
    Personally i feel safer using and linking my adsense and analytics in all my small websites empire. Safer because i show i have nothing to hide from google. And i don't see any ranking problems. imho.

    Not sure if i'm right or wrong. Who knows ....
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  • Profile picture of the author edgray
    I can't possibly see a reason why Google would implement something like that. It just doesn't make any sense.
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    Ed Gray
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  • Profile picture of the author Doiron
    A guy goes in to a fortune teller who tells him that today is his lucky day.

    Feeling great, he walks out of the shop and immediately gets hit by a truck.

    Days later, recovering in the hospital with two broken legs, he calls the fortune teller and says angrily, "You told me that was supposed to be my lucky day!"

    "It was," she says. "If it hadn't been your lucky day you would have been killed."

    I'm sure you IM wizards get it.

    You rank highly in rankings and you use Google Analytics. How do you know you wouldn't rank higher without them?

    Just sayin'.

    I just don't see how you can tell one way or the either.
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    • Profile picture of the author reapr
      Originally Posted by Doiron View Post

      A guy goes in to a fortune teller who tells him that today is his lucky day.

      Feeling great, he walks out of the shop and immediately gets hit by a truck.

      Days later, recovering in the hospital with two broken legs, he calls the fortune teller and says angrily, "You told me that was supposed to be my lucky day!"

      "It was," she says. "If it hadn't been your lucky day you would have been killed."

      I'm sure you IM wizards get it.

      You rank highly in rankings and you use Google Analytics. How do you know you wouldn't rank higher without them?

      Just sayin'.

      I just don't see how you can tell one way or the either.
      Well this thread brought me full circle ... time to go find another guru.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Lam
    My sites rank fine with GA. Sounds like BS so far. I'll be running a bunch of different tests to confirm though. Loading up about 30 websites before the end of the month so I may get some feedback by the end of next month.
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