Weigh in on rel="nofollow"

[jmk909er]

I was told on the google webmaster forums:

You have tons of Amazon affiliate links - and you're not using rel="nofollow" for them. Bad.

and

Affiliate link have to use rel="nofollow" I only gave those two affiliate links as examples, but you have to deal with all of them - add rel="nofollow" to each one.

On a wordpress forum I was told not a big deal.

My site does have a lot of affiliate links and some amazon links and I have set them all to rel="nofollow" but not any of my other external or internal links.

Am I OK with this? Am I doing anything that Google will penalize me for? Any other issues with this?

I just want to be sure I am doing the right thing and am getting conflicting info. Thanks.

 

[djbaxter]

I don't use nofollow tags at all. Ever. Personally, I think that's total BS, invented by Google in an effort to get the rest of us to police the net for them.

If I don't approve of a link, I don't put it on my site. Any links on my sites are therefore dofollow.

I haven't seen any evidence of a penalty from Google for that decision.

 

[jmk909er]

What about if most of your links are affiliate links?

 

[djbaxter]

Are they products and services you support?

 

[jmk909er]

Can you take a {look} minstrel It is a new site I made promoting affiliate products but there are also many articles

 

[djbaxter]

I may not be the best person to ask about nofollow. It's a pet peeve of mine and I've been opposed to it ever since Matt Cutts and Google perverted the concept as a way of helping them weed out links they didn't want to pass PageRank. To be blunt, I refuse to use nofollow on principle.

That said, I see nothing wrong with the way you've implemented links on your site. It looks good to me.

One thing: your home page is far too long. Split it up into subpages or excerpts with a "read more link..." for the different sections.

 

[jmk909er]

Thanks minstrel for your input. I just implemented this new child theme of twenty eleven and I am going to have the developer make it so my home page will only have 1 column instead of 2 like it has now. That should shorten up the page quite a bit

 

[djbaxter]

I actually meant shorten it in terms of content... I like the 2 column format.

It's harder to rank a page without uniform content and you have three separate (albeit related) topics on that page... and simply too much content. Excerpts linked to more... can work better, or make it a single topic per page.

 

[jmk909er]

OK I may do that thanks for the tip!

 

[artistictouchbhm]

Good to know thank you posting your input minstrel. Very helpful advise.

 

[Disciple67]

Interesting.

I'm all for a more semantic web, a more meaningful worldwide web, and if that's what rel="nofollow" is meant to promote then I'm happy to do my bit.

But as a practical matter, don't y'all think that cooperating with Google counts for something? I mean, with over ninety some-odd variables factored into its algorithm (according to former CEO Schmidt in Congressional testimony), this seems like an easy one to ace, how semantically tidy our websites are. I understand that Google considers a site's very structure, its architecture...following standards and best practices seems like a win-win to me.

Besides, I think I actually read on Google itself that it will penalize redirects to a site itself, which is what cloaked affiliate links are, right??

 

[djbaxter]

But as a practical matter, don't y'all think that cooperating with Google counts for something?

No. You don't earn points for cooperating. You may lose points for violating Google guidelines but you get nothing extra for cooperating.

I mean, with over ninety some-odd variables factored into its algorithm

That's very old data. It's now well over 200 variables and probably over 300 by now.

Besides, I think I actually read on Google itself that it will penalize redirects to a site itself, which is what cloaked affiliate links are, right??

Cloaking = bad.

Redirects = not bad unless they are designed to mislead the visitor into where they're actually being taken.

 

[Disciple67]

Whoa -- cloaking is bad???

But isn't that recommended, so that links don't get hijacked????

 

[djbaxter]

Whoa -- cloaking is bad???

But isn't that recommended, so that links don't get hijacked????

If the effect of cloaking is to disguise where the link is taking the visitor, it's "bad", i.e., outside Google's guidelines. If you use some version that merely prettifies the affiliate ID but retains the target of the link, that's acceptable, but not necessarily recommended,

See:

Cloaking - Webmaster Tools Help

Google Groups

Be Careful When Your Affiliates Practice Link Cloaking

Google Webmaster Tools Warning Of "Unnatural Links," "Cloaking" & More

Amazon Closing Accounts Using Cloaked Links....

 

[Disciple67]

But what about affiliate link hijacking?? Or is it a lesser-of-two-evils calculation: better to lose a few sales in the unlikely case of link hijacking than to very likely lose Google's good graces??

Besides link hijacking, how about those folks who like to remove affiliate IDs from a URL before clicking through? Just another write-off??

 

[Disciple67]

Sorry, I guess I really just don't want to go through the hassle of updating my links! Had just switched everything into cloaked links and now must change 'em back to their original weird-looking selves....

 

[djbaxter]

But what about affiliate link hijacking?? Or is it a lesser-of-two-evils calculation: better to lose a few sales in the unlikely case of link hijacking than to very likely lose Google's good graces??

My personal take is that the chances of that happening are much much lower than most people think. Plus if you get Google-slammed for redirects that are deceptive and disguise where the visitor is going, the loss in revenue is going to be a whole lot more than any loss from hijacking.

The more realistic risk is that people seeing shortened URLs won't click through. As I said above, there's nothing wrong with using some URL rewriting to make the affiliate ID less obvious as long as the link itself makes it clear where the person is going. Just read Google's guidelines on the subject and make sure you're not violating any of their "rules". Google isn't crazy about most affiliate sites to begin with and you certainly don't want to handicap yourself any further.

Besides link hijacking, how about those folks who like to remove affiliate IDs from a URL before clicking through? Just another write-off??

Seriously, how often do you think that happens? Most people searching for products or services wouldn't even know how to do that.

 

[Disciple67]

You don't earn points for cooperating. You may lose points for violating Google guidelines but you get nothing extra for cooperating.

Uh, I'm not so sure about that, that you get nothing at all for cooperating...I've read that one of the factors in their algorithm -- albeit a very small one -- is that Google looks at site structure as a part of its semantic determinations. The theory is that a properly developed website -- valid HTML, no broken links, that kind of stuff -- demonstrates a kind of "seriousness" to Google...this isn't anything in the face of great backlinks, of course, but adherence to approved web practices (such as, perhaps, rel="nofollow") counts for just a bit more than non-compliance....

The more realistic risk is that people seeing shortened URLs won't click through.

Huh?? I thought it'd be more likely that people seeing weird big long non-sensical URLs wouldn't click through, not those who see short URLs.

As I said above, there's nothing wrong with using some URL rewriting to make the affiliate ID less obvious as long as the link itself makes it clear where the person is going.

So would Super-Product-Site.com/mysitename instead of MySite.com/Super-Product-Deal be cool, or is that still considered cloaking??

I'd thought "rewriting" a URL was the same as "cloaking" it...?

Seriously, how often do you think that happens? Most people searching for products or services wouldn't even know how to do that.

Can't remember where I read it now, but there was a post on some marketer's blog about the phenomenon of people not wanting to see others succeed, or succeed so easily...something about human psychology where folks, even other marketers, will deliberately shorten affiliate links to just the domain homepage itself so as to deny any affiliate tracking advantages, so intense is the dislike at being sold to....

Anyway, sure, that's a minority of folks and not worth Google's wrath.

 

[jcorkern]

I agree with minstrel on this one. I have many sites and I can bet you not one is W3C valid, but they get millions of visits per month. I do not use nofollow, it is more of a ratio of pages with affiliate links in relation to the pages without affiliate links. This is where Google speaks of "Thin" affiliate sites. If you have affiliate links on each and every page, a manual review or even the algo may hit you for being a thin affiliate site.

This is why most that use content marketing have an average of 10 to 1 informational pages to the "money" pages. So for each page with the products, they have 10 pre-sell pages with great, clean information that leads to the sale. Like telling the whole story of arthritis pain. you need to cover why it hurts, when it may hurt, underlying causes, simple lifestyle solution, natural cures and then other products like "devils claw". You have to inform them and then have one page with all of the products on that one page, but the other 10 to 50 pages lead them there by answering questions the sufferer might have so they can make an informed decision. it is not about cooperating, it is about common sense and good business practices.

the URL shortners have a bad risk because it does hide the destination and I never click them because they could download a virus. So i agree with this also.

I do use redirects for affiliate links but always setup a folder or directory for redirects that reads like: thesiteurl.com/go-merchant/xyzcompany so that the user knows where they can expect to land and looks nicer and more professional, just common courtesy as far as I am concerned. This also takes care of the cloaking issues because you are telling them where they are going.

link highjacking is not that common, and I bet they were selling the link cloaking software, just like the ones that endorse spinning sell stuff that you need to spin content. Think about it!

And as minstrel stated earlier, very few even know what an affiliate link is anyway, next is that you must have an FTC disclosure on the site by law anyway that states you use affiliate links and can make commissions, so whats to hide....you already gave disclosure.

If you have 1/10th of 1% that would remove the tracking link and go directly to the merchant, then they are real shallow people and you should not worry about it. If it is higher than that, you need to re-evaluate your content because it is lacking and they do not trust you for some reason.

Hope this explains why minstrel has the positions he has, they make perfect sense to me.