The good the bad and the ugly

[coder]

Maybe it's only me, but recently I've noticed a lot more affiliate sites popping up in SE's. And while this may seem like a good thing especially for the affiliate sites, I find myself hitting the back button more and more to get back to the SE. The problem I see, is that there has been an explosion of affiliate sites out there and for every 1 decent site created there are 20 more that are horrifying; pages of banners and some of the spammiest content created. It's a wonder some of them are even indexed at all.

Remember back when there was only a couple of sites using pop-ups and they weren't that annoying and now they're everywhere. Well for me it's kinda like that with the affiliate sites.

The sad thing is that the bad and ugly sites are giving the entire affiliate marketing industry a bad wrap. I don't think anyone can do anything about it now since Pandoras box has been opened.

I wouldn't be surprised if SE's start filtering out affiliate sites, although i'm not sure how they could determine what is an affiliate site. Anyone else have thoughts on this.

[Linda Buquet]

Yes, agreed. Spammy sites make the whole industry look bad. The SE are cracking down and Google has given their human editors guidelines.

Are you a THIN Affiliate? Google Does Not Like You!
Google's Spam Recognition Guide for Raters
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliat...e-google-spam/

Unfortunately some good innocent affiliate sites have gotten caught in the cross-fire too.

[coder]

Catalyst I followed your link and came across the following word doc, there is a lot of good stuff in there for affiliates as well as anyone else creating websites.

http://www.searchbistro.com/spamguide.doc

a recommended read for anyone interested in SEO

[DMC_34]

I do not run affiliate sites but I firmly believe human reviewed sites by Google does not level the playing field at all. Human review is subjective and is the problem with certain prolific directories. Subjectivity is easily swayed and tainted and easily used as an excuse. Objective is much better and that is exactly what CPU is when processing the algo. Yeah ok the algo is written by humans. True, but human review brings emotions and certain other potentially bad factors into it.

What if you get a review by a person who just had a really bad day.

Be careful what you wish for, you may not like the results.

DMC

[CreditFN]

Hi,

I run an affiliate program site www.CreditFN.com, and we believe we create a great service for people. Regardless of our site running affiliate links, we deserve high rankings on search engines for the quality of service we supply people. Currently we are in a struggle in the highly competitive financial/credit card industry to achieve high rankings, but we do not think there is a more deserving site than ours.

As for the affiliate sites, stop complaining and beat them at their own game. If they arn't providing any service of use, then they should end up dieing financially cause there would be no value in these sites. Obviously someone is finding value in their services, and the search engines are keeping them ranked.

I am in total disagreement with your statements, and if you really believe these affiliate sites are weak and irrelevant. Challenge them and make a change on the web.

[Linda Buquet]

The thing is there are some great affiliate sites that add value to the web. However, TONS of affiliates just SPAM the engines with black hat SEO techniques, crappy pages, tricks for clicks schemes and stuff that really does clog up the engines and make the industry look bad. Just like the affiliate email spammers clog up our inboxes with Viagr@, PEEnis enlargement and Rolex affiliate spam - it all goes toward helping to devalue affiliate marketing in the eyes of the online marketing industry.

Just like email spammers ruined email marketing for honest marketing companies - SE affiliate spammers could make it tougher for honest marketing sites to get rankings.

Everyone knows I am an affiliate advocate and will stand up for affiliates whenever I can - but GOOD HONEST affiliate marketing tactics is the only thing I can support. The industry DOES need to be cleaned up and if people don't start self-regulating then we aren't going to like what happens when others, like Google start regulating FOR us!