Replicated Websites: Are They Viewed as Spam by SEs?

[Croni176]

Our company is going to start an affiliate program in a near future. As part of marketing support we are going to give our affiliates a ready promotional website. This is going to be a stripped down version of our own main website. It is obvious that in a near future there will be many of these identical sites on the web. Do you have any idea how this can affect their rankings? Rankings of our main website?

Thank you in advance!

[ctabuk]

This is one for faglork, or hoptoo, yes and others, but I'm posting to ask you to put your signature in for the URL in Profile.
Experts, could they not code each version?

[wednesday]

Are you going to set up a custom (logo, links to affiliate site) page for every affiliate, or just the same template with different URL. And how you're going to count sales?

Martin

[Croni176]

Thank you!

This will be just the same template with different tracking URLs

[ahilton]

Can we revisit this issue? I have the same question...

[wednesday]

Originally Posted by Croni176

Thank you!

This will be just the same template with different tracking URLs

Just my opinion here.

yoursite.com/?partnerid=456 =>
count the hits & set the coockies =>
301 permanent redirect => yoursite.com

This way you'll get links to your site. As an affiliate I personaly preffer to link to the main site through a 301 redirected link instead a link to a duplicated greybar affiliate template.

Martin

[Needabed]

Brain, interesting site u got there, interested in a link exchange? where can I read more about your affiliate program?

[cbp]

Think about it from the search engines perspective. Why would they want to clutter up their index with multiple copies of the same site?

CBP

[ahilton]

But what about localized versions of website? For instance, copies of the site that have been anglicized?

[incrediblehelp]

A copy is a copy, look at the pre-made templates for other industries like gambling, adult and prescription. Most of these templates are garbage in the search engines. If you and the affiliates do not care about search performance of the template then a copy would be OK, but like CBP why would a search engine like this as a end user perspective. Just to be safe I would make the template completely different from your main website just to be safe.

[wednesday]

Seem like I missed something here. Though the templates will be hosted on your server. :)

[Mr. Black]

It probably wont effect you one bit , but your pages will be like trash in the internet and probably irritate people more than help. I agree a copy is a copy. I am almost 100% that you pages will not rank well---given. You have to have something to make them different.

[Gary Golden]

I have had many people want to exchange links with me that have what appear to be cookie cutter sites, they are everywhere.

Most are P0 - P5 and link pages are usually P0 as they have hundreds of links on a page, all the site look alike with no character.

When you link to one you will recieve hundreds, though hundreds of P0 is still P0.

[clasione]

Originally Posted by Croni176

Our company is going to start an affiliate program in a near future. As part of marketing support we are going to give our affiliates a ready promotional website. This is going to be a stripped down version of our own main website. It is obvious that in a near future there will be many of these identical sites on the web. Do you have any idea how this can affect their rankings? Rankings of our main website?

Thank you in advance!

This is a very good question and an important one.... Good thing your asking....

If all the sites are using the same template you must have a way to at the very least provide unique content on each affiliates site.... (different words)

It is still unfortunete that every template will be exactly the same Example: logo.jpg

button1.jpg button2.jpg

The whole site will be the same...