Comments on: Affiliate links Outranking Official Links on Google

By: Steve Nyman

Steve Nyman — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:31:51 +0000

Google sure has it wrapped up.

By: Online marketing is oorlog: Aanbieders en Vergelijkers vechten het uit · Usarchy

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 09:24:11 +0000

[...] Affiliate “outranks” official link Darren van Problogger zag ook een trend op dit gebied. Links van affiliates (vergelijkers) komen hoger in Google dan de site zelf. Dit komt doordat er meer met de affiliate link naar een site wordt gelinked dan met de “echte” URL. De vergelijker is hier dus weer beter in zoekmachine optimalisatie dan de aanbieder… [...]

By: George

George — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:33:54 +0000

Looks like the guy over at http://jackofallblogs.com cant tell a affiliate link from a main link. He’s using Darren’s Chitika affiliate link as a link to the site.

Seems like alot of people for for those links.

By: Jennifer Grucza

Jennifer Grucza — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:08:21 +0000

Well, I think the disallow is only disallowing Google from downloading the URL. And if Google can never download it, it won’t realize that you’re telling it to redirect to a different URL, and you’ll end up with the URL in their index (minus any description). I think you want to allow Google to spider it, while redirecting at the same time (making sure you’re sending the correct HTTP status code).

If you want to get rid of URL’s immediately, there’s the Google URL removal tool. We had a site where Google was showing a bunch of old, bad URLs that must have been from before we owned the domain. They all were returning 404’s, so I’m not sure why they were in the index. We used the removal tool to get rid of most of them. However, there are a few different flavors of the removal tool – this one was just for dead pages returning 404. Not sure if you would want to use it for redirected pages.

By: Chris Biber

Chris Biber — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:28:04 +0000

Jennifer, a client of mine has implemented the redirect/disallow routine, but the affiliate links (even those in the disallowed directory!) still show up in the Google index (site:www.company.com ).

Any clue why that is? I understand, of course, that some of the older http://www.comapny.com/index.asp?aff=1234 links still show up for a while, but the new restricted ones?? What gives?

By: Jennifer Grucza

Jennifer Grucza — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:27:14 +0000

Stuart, I have no idea what you’re talking about and what it has to do with my comment.

Here is an example of what I was saying. Say business xyz.com runs an affiliate program. Affiliates use links like http://xyz.com/?affId=123.

To prevent this affiliate link showing up highest in the search results, xyz.com can set up its code to redirect it to http://xyz.com. Google will see the link to http://xyz.com/?affId=123, but once it hits that page, it will see that it should not index it.

How is that messing with anyone else’s search results? Both URL’s are xyz.com’s URL’s. They have every right to redirect from one to another.

By: Jeffrey Behrendt - Ottawa Divorce Blog

Jeffrey Behrendt - Ottawa Divorce Blog — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:48:19 +0000

It shows that there are still big payoffs for getting your site ranking #1, and also that being “the authoritative source” is not all that its cracked up to be.

By: Affiliate Links besser gerankt als offizielle Links - Webmaster & SEO Blog

Affiliate Links besser gerankt als offizielle Links - Webmaster & SEO Blog — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:21:51 +0000

[...] Sonntag, 13. Nov 2005 (13:21) gsyi document.write(”) Darren Browse beschreibt im problogger das Phänomen, dass Affiliate Links besser gerankt sind als die eigentlichen Programmbetreiber. Der Surfer findt zwar, wonach er sucht, der Programmbetreiber muss aber mehr Provision auszahlen. Das Ganze sieht man auch bei Google.de (z. B. TXTsense). Ich persönlich würde es nicht als Problem bezeichnen, solange die Qualität der Serps stimmt. Es gab schließlich Zeiten, die schlimmer waren… 1 x gelesen [...]

By: Tom Hanna - Financial Options

Tom Hanna - Financial Options — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:54:14 +0000

I don’t see that there’s much for the “official” site owner to be upset about. Sure, they have to pay the affiliate a commission, but they obviously didn’t spend the time and/or money to optimize their site for the search engines as well as that affiliate did. It’s a trade-off. They can venture into the minefield of “blackhats” and “whitehats” and hope their SEO efforts don’t result in a search engine ban after going to great expense with no guarantee of success. Or, they can offer an affiliate program that pays on a contingency basis – they don’t get results, the affiliate doesn’t get money. Bottom line is this: if they don’t like it, instead of complaining they should be doing the hard work of improving their ranking.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:50:07 +0000

Interesting – it’s still giving the affiliate link here in Melbourne. Just talked to somone in the UK and they see it too. Data centres are obviously all different…

Duncan you guys are probably closer to African Google or something than Aus :-)

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:38:59 +0000

The affliate link is live in natural search results via the Australian Google.

By: duncan

duncan — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:27:26 +0000

As Paul says, I checked and Chitika is at the top.

By: CaricatureKing

CaricatureKing — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 08:52:39 +0000

It often is not as easy as just creatng an affiliate link, as someone proposed earlier. Making money out of being an affiliate is hard work…

In response to the suffering of sites when they see affiliates rank higher than them two issues:
1. the affilaite has worked to do this – the name owner site needs to lift their game
2. Increasingly the use of brand names is being banned by companies in affiliate advertising. many have implemented this for Google ads.

By: Paul Short

Paul Short — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:57:10 +0000

I just checked the word “chitika” in Google and the link to the site you are referring to is no longer at the top, in fact, I can’t find it in the top 30. The Chitika. com main site and their blog are #’s 1 and 2.

Did the big G read your post?

By: Karen Rani

Karen Rani — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:04:58 +0000

Well that is annoying. I doubt anyone would ever type in my entire blog title though. Interesting read. Thanks.

By: Jon

Jon — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:54:21 +0000

The next gen. affiliate links may use something like this…called naked links that detect the affiliate based on where the click comes from rather than referral codes in url parameters.

http://www.linkconnector.com/inc/press_nlt_072904.htm

By: Jon

Jon — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:37:06 +0000

It’s the same on MSN…the one in position 6 for the search Rich Dad is mine…mmmmm…yummy!

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=rich+dad&FORM=QBHP

By: Felipe

Felipe — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:24:53 +0000

Paul, an affiliate link take 2s to make, right, but if the affiliate site is first ranked, it’s probably read and linked by many visitors and sites. It doesn’t mean there is quality in it but at least it is well known on the web.

Google search has never been about quality, it’s more about fame and well-known(ness?). To evaluate in a quantitative manner, they use good algorithms but the flaw is in the concept, it can’t evaluate quality. There is a need for humans there (and it’s pretty tricky too, everybody has its own taste!).

By: Stuart

Stuart — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:56:46 +0000

Jennifer would you really like someone else to interfere with the way your sites appear in Google SERPS?

If somebody did that to me I would be looking to carry out some seriously painful surgery with a blunt knife on their very private parts.

By: Jennifer Grucza

Jennifer Grucza — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:48:48 +0000

It seems like this shouldn’t be that hard for official sites to prevent. I’m sure they could arrange the code on their servers to somehow count the affiliate link and then send a 301 (or some other) HTTP status to the client. That way search engines would know not to index those affiliate links (and to use the official one instead).