CONFUSION
These is a
BIG difference between
affiliates and
affiliated sites
This confusion has come up in a number of forums and people have gone off with
BIG misunderstandings.
An
affiliate is when there is a business relationship (ie you get a payment when you direct someone to another site who buys something) - there is nothing wrong with this in Googles eye (unless there has been a policy change in the last 24hrs - I just got back from being in the bush)
An
affiliated site is one on the same class IP address. This was defined in the patent Google got with the Hilltop algo - the word
affiliation was used a lot in the documents. Google probably has a problem with this. Under the Hilltop thingy, links between affiliated sites (ie on the same class IP address) are likely to be ignored or devalued in the ranking formula (but maybe not the
PR formula).
Quote:
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The moderator is working through the different stages of SEO. She just stated that there has been a change in policy with Google and that a website could be penalized for having an "affiliation page".
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That moderator is being very irresponsible for spreading this and not getting it right - tell them so.
CBP