Nofollow Affiliate Links or Google May Penalize You

[djbaxter]

Linking To Affiliates? Better Nofollow Those Links or Google Will Penalize You
Search Engine Roundtable
September 24, 2009

A Google Webmaster Help thread has one webmaster who runs a home construction resource complaining that his rankings tanked. After some back and forth, Googler, JohnMu came in and said:

I browsed your site's reviews a bit and most of the links are either affiliate links or links to the companies without nofollow. This doesn't seem to match your reply regarding the use of nofollow. Perhaps it would be good to double-check and submit a reconsideration request should you find something that could be improved.​

Yes, this webmaster dared to write a review or an article and decided to link to related products within the article, via a straight link, to the affiliate. Google likely automatically found the links, felt the site was abusing their paid link policy and slapped them with a penalty for it.

...more

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks minstrel, I just read that this morning too. Very interesting.

Here is another semi-related post I read recently.
(It's about Google and affiliate links but not specifically no follow.)

<a href="http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020767.html">How Google Treats Affiliates In Web Search?</a>

"There is a featured WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of how Google treats affiliate links and if there are ways to hide your affiliate links from Google.

There is discussion that Google will lower your rank of a web page, if it has an affiliate link on that page. I honestly do not know if that is a true statement."

 

[djbaxter]

And there's another story (don't have the link to hand) about efforts Google is pushing to move closer to a monopoly on the web...

Frankly, the way Google is handling nofollow links has become the last straw for me. If you don't use nofollow the way Google wants you to, they threaten penalties. If you do use nofollow, they deduct the PageRank that would otherwise be passed from the available PageRank to pass to other links on that page (including your own internal navigation links).

Most of the outgoing links on my pages are NOT links I want to no follow, because they provide useful information or services or products for my visitors.

I have now removed all nofollows from my web pages. Let Google do with that what they wish. I'm fed up with the whimsical policy changes and I have never been happy with the demand by Google that I do their work for them for free.

Barry Schwartz seems to feel the same way:

I am one of the few bloggers who decided that this blog's sponsors are not just "advertisers" but also extremely related to the site's content and can be useful to ALL of our readers. Hence, I decided to take a hit on this site's PageRank and ranking - to stand tall.

 

[fitnfree]

I relate to everything you're saying minstrel. I am so tired of fooling around adding nofollow, not adding nofollow - surely there is too much made out of this; at least I hope so.

I, too am doing my pages/links up the way I wish to. I feel my content is good etc. and just do not understand why an affiliate link or two is a bad thing. Isn' that partly what the web is all about??? And why is referring a product something to penalize? I just never did understand that - it's - IMHO - called business, just like they are... (sigh).

 

[djbaxter]

Exactly. It's getting to the point where Google seems to be saying

• we don't approve of anything that might generate income for anyone but Google
• we want you to follow our Webmaster Guidelines - oh but be warned that we change them frequently on a whim and we won't necessarily tell you about the changes until months after the fact

 

[JohnKC]

If I send visitors from my page to affiliate page via flash button / menu / ad on my page, is there a way to insert a nofollow inside that? (I work with flash 5, I don't know about the newer versions).

 

[Laura61]

This is from GWT's nofollow page:

Paid links: A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links.

Okay, sounds reasonable to me, but is a paid link really the same as an affiliate link? Not to me. So who's going to tell the thousands of companies who have affiliates driving traffic to them that Google might not allow it anymore?

Because it's past my bedtime, I probably am totally misunderstanding this whole thing. If so, please forgive me! This stuff is making my head hurt. I've got enough to do without jumping through all these hoops and not even knowing why!

 

[djbaxter]

This is from GWT's nofollow page:

Paid links: A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters use nofollow on such links.

Okay, sounds reasonable to me, but is a paid link really the same as an affiliate link? Not to me. So who's going to tell the thousands of companies who have affiliates driving traffic to them that Google might not allow it anymore?

Because it's past my bedtime, I probably am totally misunderstanding this whole thing. If so, please forgive me! This stuff is making my head hurt. I've got enough to do without jumping through all these hoops and not even knowing why!

No, Laura, You're not misunderstanding anything. Google is changing the rules as they go along and expecting thje rest of the world to dance to their tune.

The nofollow tag was originally designed to reduce comment spam in blogs. Then Google decided to hijack it to penalize paid links and insisted that webmasters all nofollow advertising links ro prevent the passing of PageRank. This wasn't their only option for dealing with advertising links and had they been less of a monopoly they would not have been able to get away with this, but as it was they were able to bully webmasters (or most of them anyway) into compliance. Then they changed the rules again - only this time they didn't bother to tell anyone for months: They decided that even if a link was nofollowed, they would deduct the PageRank value of that link from the "bank" of available PageRank that a web page could pass through its other links.

And now they've suddenly decided that affiliate links need to be penalized in this fashion as well.

What the logic of this latest move is exactly escapes me. Affiliates don't make any money from a link unless someone clicks on it and buys something. How is this any different from the ads that Google sells via its AdWords/AdSense program?

This is beyond bullying, in my opinion. This is restraint of trade. It's also blatant hypocrisy on Google's part. And it's about time somebody pointed out that the Emperor has no clothes.

It's a pity George W. Bush is retired. He'd be sending in troops to the Googleplex rooting out WMDs. And he'd have my support.

 

[Niche48]

Wasn't aware of this no follow affiliate links thing. or maybe I was but just chose to ignore it.
It really does not make any sense to me but, unfortunately, if we are doing business with Google, we need to play it their way

 

[djbaxter]

It really does not make any sense to me but, unfortunately, if we are doing business with Google, we need to play it their way

We're not "doing business" with Google, though.

And we don't need to play it their way: We can switch to Bing as the primary search engine. Boost Bing-Yahoo's share of the market and reduce Google's as a way of sending a message of displeasure with their business practices.

 

[djbaxter]

As another indication of the hypocrisy inherent in Google's stance, see Google to Sprinkle Ads All Over Google Maps?