Google Issues Stern Warning to Affiliate Sites

[housekeeper]

Originally Posted by Simon

In my 58+ years I've been fortunate to have learned a lot from criminals and pirates. You don't have to choose to be one to learn from them.

That is a very true and profound statement, I subscribe to that fully. That facts being that it's all business, and there are tactics across the board, you borrow from everybody. The majority of the most successful are corrupt, or shady, they have to be.

I'm wondering what the best practice is with respect to starting from scratch, I just opened a new site and I'm finding myself using the same structural techniques. What I'm getting from G's new updates is they're nipping in the bud the redundancy of the content, in other words the spider will detect the type of embed code for a video, or the ref codes etc. and that's the red flag. I can't think that the keywords and target tags need to be removed in favor of playing nice. So what would be a good outline with respect to approaching a new project, for a free site?

[lezinterracial]

Originally Posted by Simon

It's not easy to rank a white label site. So if that's a new one, and you had some good Google traffic for a while at first, it probably was what people call their honeymoon period. Did your site drop to a natural place in the SERPs or is it way down? A natural drop is okay, a big drop could mean your site will be spending time on probation in their sandbox.

And yes, content is definitely needed on that page/site if you ever want it to get any SE traffic. But you also want to think about how the Big G will view your incoming link profile. Unless I'm looking at the wrong site, having almost 60K incoming links from only 9 domains (on only 7 different IPs) isn't going to do you any good. Plus too many links with your exact match domain (EMD), which is no longer a good idea (in fact it's been a bad idea since at least September 2012 when Google rolled out (admitted to) its EMD update).

Not a big drop. I am still getting organic hits, But I was the first link returned on the google search for best free cam girls there for a while.

Gonna fix my links from my pimproll hosted tube sites.

Thanks Simon.

[Jeremy82]

Originally Posted by lezinterracial

Giving it a try.

Ditto.

[lezinterracial]

Great thread! Not sure if it was this issue or my Google honeymoon period was up.

I just lost my ranking for my chaturbate white label. I was taking the xml feed and showing the top free chaturbate girls on the main page. http://www.bestfreecamgirls.com

Either way, Need to figure out how to get more text content on the page.

[PhoneMistress]

I asked this question under Search Engines. Are LLs considered link farms as per the Google definition of link schemes? When I initially saw the Google warning regarding affiliate links and their criteria to base this on as "thin" information, I wondered about LLs. Now, I am on their webmaster forum looking to see what if any penalty my site has and the first accusation out of the box is that I have a "major link farm".

Also, does anyone have a link or know the context of when Matt Cutts stated a few months back that Google will start focusing on porn sites? In my research I picked up on that bit of information from several webmaster forums and can't seem to find exactly when that statement was made.

[ArtWilliams]

Here is the tweet from Cutts:

https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/427921190162665472

Not sure if they hate link lists because they are link farms but, off the top of my head, and some of which Simon has mentioned earlier, Google depreciates link lists because:

- they have unnatural one to one linking. You've got that main page anchor from that same sites going back to the link lists time again and again.
- they have backlinks that have the same anchor text.
- they have short descriptions on the link lists that add no real value.

As Simon wrote [and I badly paraphrase], link lists, in order to restore some former glory, need to have linking that appears more natural. It would be more advantagous to ask the link requester (i.e. freesite, gallery maker) to link back to the link list from another site and use anchor text that they make up themselves. Also, link lists should encourage longer descriptons of what you'll find if you click on the link.

Finally, IMHO I think that Google sees link lists as directories or simple search engines. They are competitors of Google and Google will not let you win. Freeones is a site with great value but it's been recently slammed in the rankings. Why? Not because of it's value - it's a quality site - but because Google wants that traffic and advertising revenue.

Originally Posted by PhoneMistress

I asked this question under Search Engines. Are LLs considered link farms as per the Google definition of link schemes? When I initially saw the Google warning regarding affiliate links and their criteria to base this on as "thin" information, I wondered about LLs. Now, I am on their webmaster forum looking to see what if any penalty my site has and the first accusation out of the box is that I have a "major link farm".

Also, does anyone have a link or know the context of when Matt Cutts stated a few months back that Google will start focusing on porn sites? In my research I picked up on that bit of information from several webmaster forums and can't seem to find exactly when that statement was made.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by artwilliams

Google sees link lists as directories or simple search engines. They are competitors of Google and Google will not let you win. Freeones is a site with great value but it's been recently slammed in the rankings. Why? Not because of it's value - it's a quality site - but because Google wants that traffic and advertising revenue.

Bingo :-/

[Simon]

Originally Posted by PhoneMistress

...does anyone have a link or know the context of when Matt Cutts stated a few months back that Google will start focusing on porn sites?

I'll try to make it back here to talk about this more later, but I have a lot of billing and collecting work to take care of today.

In the meantime I just want to mention that it's very important to listen* to what Matt Cutts has to say. At the same time, it's also very important not to believe what he's telling you. There's usually some good information to be gleaned from his talks and replies to questions, but the good stuff is usually more in what he chooses not to say and in the way he replies, and not so much in the words that come out of his mouth.

*I mean "listen" as in video/audio of him, like this recent clip...



For instance, in this clip he hands out the clue that having nofollow links to your site will not hurt your rankings. What the clue means, and what he does not say, is that Google expects you to have a certain amount of nofollow links out there pointing to your site. If you don't, you'll have an unnatural link profile and may get slammed by some part of their algorithm.

Google will never do it, but it would be very cool if they'd add a "When Matt Cutts says... > What he means is..." option to their online language translator.

Okay, back to work and here.

[PhoneMistress]

Yeah, it took me awhile to figure out that they expect you to have some nofollow links on your pages. I stalk ...I mean follow Matt Cutts everywhere especially the Webmaster videos. Hmmm that's an interesting thought and explains why there seems to be 2 camps after every new video: the he's lying camp and the he said camp. The need to read between the lines seems to be the compromise ;-)

[Simon]

Quick note to make sure the point is clear...

Originally Posted by Simon

... Google expects you to have a certain amount of nofollow links out there pointing to your site. If you don't, you'll have an unnatural link profile and may get slammed by some part of their algorithm.

Originally Posted by PhoneMistress

Yeah, it took me awhile to figure out that they expect you to have some nofollow links on your pages.

Emphasis in quotes above added by me.

Yes, it's also important to use the nofollow attribute in certain kinds of links on your own site's pages.

However, the thing I want to be clear about is that you need to have links with the nofollow attribute in them pointing to your site from other people's sites.

Depending on your link profile the nofollow attribute should be in at least 2% of those links, but could go up to 5% or even 10-15% for some sites. And many of those kinds of links can be the ones with exact match anchors that otherwise can stack up too high and hurt you.

Okay, moving from the general to the specific for a minute...

Looking at your site, there seems to be almost 9% nofollow links, which is probably more than twice what you need. Also, the site appears to have about 1,200 backlinks, but over 900 of them are from just three domains with the other 300 spread over only 60 or so other domains.

Your keyword density for "cheap phone sex" is a little high on your main page. It used to be okay to be near 5% (like you are now), but today it's better to get it down to around 3-4%. Also, the exact match domain (EMD) penalty algorithm could be working against you, as those keywords also appear a lot more times in the page's underlying code and in a lot (too many) of the incoming links to your EMD site.

I haven't looked too closely at the free sites on your domain, but I did notice that some of the URLs are your domain with a directory like /phonesex/ plus a four-digit number. Too many index pages like that will seem like "doorway" pages, which is something that can also hurt you.

And actually, it may be that the Big G has been viewing the index pages of all free sites as doorway pages for several years now. Then on those pages add a whole bunch of outbound links to sites which link right back to that same page and I think you can see how Uncle G won't think that's a good thing.

That's all for now...gotta get some food inside me.

[PhoneMistress]

Oh, Simon, you didn't have to do that, but thank you so very much! Having another set of eyes look at my stuff helps a lot.

It does look like an EMD penalty is in play. Now keep in mind I always ranked #1 for my chosen search terms throughout these Penguin and Panda updates. I didn't even know what an EMD was until late last night. It's good to get some confirmation from someone in the business.

It's a 14 year old site. So, I am removing every one of those free sites that look "doorway-y" and reassessing the archives which are the main reason behind that 5% keyword density.

And actually, it may be that the Big G has been viewing the index pages of all free sites as doorway pages for several years now.

Would it make more sense to move gallery pages into a blog? I submitted Fuckable Booty last year and was quite pleased with the results.

Now I am off to dinner. Thanks again Simon. Best of luck everyone.