Panda and affiliate networks
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Last year we were hit with a Panda penalty and have been unable to recover from this. We removed all duplicate content from our site and SEOMoz confirms this.
I have spoken to a new SEO company and they have identified that the cause maybe our content being duplicated off site by affiliates who are using our product feed such as Shopwiki and Thefind.
Is this a possibibilty and if so I presume the easiest thing to do is stop these affiliates using our descriptions.
Neil
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Hi,
I ended the affiliate programmes with Shopwiki, Digidrop and one or two other similar affiliates. We saw a quick and small bounce back of some product related terms but it has take a while for the affiliates to remove our data so their listings are still dropping our of google. It seems that for some reason the affiliates are being credited with being the owners of the content and therefore listing higher than us.
Do you think this is because the feeds are uploading every night and Shopwiki etc are being spidered quicker than our site. One solution may be a weeks delay in new products being put onto our affiliate feeds.
Here is an example of where the affiliates are all listing above the link for http://www.gear-zone.co.uk
Please let me know what you think and how you are getting on with the issues you are experiencing.
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Hello
Did you get any further with this? We are in a similar position with shop wiki and would love to know how you got on with this issue.
Thanks
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All the content is written by us. The reason I chose that item is that it is basically an own brand item. Heres another example
"Two-layer Gore-Tex uppers and Ballistics cloth bottoms make these Black Diamond Front Point Gaiters ideal for glacial travel and ice climbing.
The Front Point Gaiters provide warmth and waterproofing, and are tough as nails in repelling crampon spikes. Secured underfoot with a burly strap, these gaiters are easy to put on or remove using a velcro closure system and shock cord."
As you can see all the sites listed are affiliate shopping sites.
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As the affiliates are through networks they have affiliate tracking code so there is no link building benefit to us.
Our URL is www.gear-zone.co.uk and you can see if you google this text we do not appear first
"Get a grip when the weather does its worst with these excellent snow and ice grips.
Each sole is equipped with 13 self-tapping, replaceable carbon steel screw spikes, providing superb traction in the ice and snow."
It relates to this page so as you can see there is definatly a problem
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Do you have canonical tags? Is it possible to add a cross-site canonical to any of the affiliate pages? At the very least they should link directly back to the relevant product page on your own site.
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Thats an awful lot of work as our catalogue is over 4000 items and to be honest they are not contributing as much as they have in the past.
Is there some clever code to force Google to show we are the primary source?
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