Affiliate links vs. seo (updated 19.02.2014)

[Silviu]

UPDATE - 19.02.2014:

Hi,

We got another negative answer from Google pointing again to our affiliate links, so the 301 redirect and block was not enough.
I understand the need of contacting all of them and ask for the nofollow, we've started the process, but it will take time, alot of time.

So I'd like to bring to your attention another 2 scenarious I have in mind:

1. Disavow all the affiliate links.
Is it possible to add big amount of domains (>1000) to the disavow doc.? Anyone tryed this?

2. Serve 404 status for urls coming from affiliates that did not add noffolow attribute.
This way we kinda tell G that content is no longer available, but we will end up with few thousand 404 error pages.
The only way to fix all those errors is by 301 redirecting them afterwards (but this way the link juice might 'restart' flowing and the problem might persist).

Any input is welcomed.

Thanks

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Hi Mozers,

After a reconsideration request regarding our link profile, we got a 'warning' answer about some of our affiliate sites (links coming from our affiliate sites that violate Google's quality guidelines).

What we did (and was the best solution in trying to fix the 'seo mistake' and not to turn off the affiliate channel) was to 301 redirect all those links to a /AFFN/ folder and block this folder from indexing.
We're still waiting for an answer on our last recon. request.

I want to know you opinion about this? Is this a good way to deal with this type of links if they're reported? Changing the affiliate engine and all links on the affiliate sites would be a big time and technical effort, that's why I want to make sure it's truly needed.

Best,
Silviu

[Everett]

As I said before, a 301 redirect will pass pagerank. Even if it goes to a blocked folder, that's still domain-level benefit coming into your site from "paid" links.

The best solution, in my opinion, is for sites to run their affiliate program through another domain first, and 302 (temporary) redirect the user to the main site.

Affiliate links to www.YourAffiliateDomain.com/?afflink-id=123, which has a domain-wide robots.txt disallow.  The ?afflink-id=123 part tells the system where to redirect the user to on the primary domain. The user goes from that URL through a 302 redirect to the appropriate URL on your primary domain.

No pagerank is passed and you can kill off the domain if you ever need to and those redirects will stop coming into the site.

If you are unable to do all of this you can submit a disavow file for all non-compliant affiliate domains after asking them to nofollow their links. I think the limit is supposed to be 2,000 domains, but I've heard of people doing as much as 4,000 with no problem. Just give it a try and see what happens.

[Silviu]

Hi guys,

I've updated the post with the latest news and switched it to 'discussion'.
Let me know your thoughts.

Cheers,
S.

[Silviu]

Thanks for the insight Everett,

That's what I'm afraid of - the 'benefit' at the domain-level.
That's the plan: the affiliates to update their links, but I'm sure the process will not be very fast.

[Everett]

Hello,

Even though you are blocking that folder the fact remains that you are paying people a commission to place followable links on their site. Since a 301 redirect passes pagerank you are still violating Google's guidelines even if the page two which thy point is blocked in the robots.txt file. This is because, technically, you might still benefit at the domain-level from those links pointing into your domain.

If you turned those links into 302 redirects and/or had the affiliates update them to add nofollow code, it would probably be enough.

[mstoic]

The thing you did is very appropriate. As mentioned by Oleg Korneitchouk, you must nofollow all those links too.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Check out: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-affiliate-links-we-handle-majority-of-them-125859

I would message all your aff's and ask them to nofollow, make the new default URL you give to aff's nofollow and keep your 301 redirect thing. In your next RR (if you need it) mention all those steps you took.