Google Does not like!

[pcgiant]

:) I did a test with our website pricenap.co.uk to see how google reacted.
the website is over 1 year old and was using shopwindow prior to the test.

I removed shopwindow from the above domain then

I reinstalled shop window on our server and assigned it to the above url.

I then removed all redirects (ie) awin goto.php, also i removed the main category menu from all pages but left the breadcrumb in place.

I was left with a home page with hot picks and nothing else the product page contained full product info but without the redirect links ie More Info/Buy Now , Featured Merchants. I did also add hot picks to the product pages as a way to show more links with relevant content. you can see this at pricenap.co.uk

After 1 month pr with google had gone from pr1 to pr5 google had listed over 50,000 pages from our site and we was receiving over 1000+ visitors per day from google.

After 1 month I replaced the buy now/more info buttons and the featured merchants to the product pages and added the category list to the main page.

After just 3 days of replacing the buttons and category menu traffic to this domain had gone from over 1000+ visitors per day to just 30+ visitors a day. Google has gone from over 50,000 pages to just 5,000+ pages cached. And even now i can see this getting lower.


I think it is fare to say Google has an issue with shopwindow api, and the sooner we admit this the sooner we can find a resolution.
Please check your site let us know how you are doing in terms of organic search engines ie visitors per day from organic search, PR, Google's cached pages from your site. Please be honest

Have your say

[authcode]

Are you saying Google doesn't like the structure of SW sites or that it has a problem with "goto" and/or affiliate links? I can see both causing problems.

It might also be the case that your site changed in such a dramatic way that Google has bumped it down the results until it can figure out if it's still largely the same site. Sitewide changes to big sites can have quite an impact on ranking in my experience. It would be worth seeing if your traffic comes back after another month or so.

[Andy]

Google doesn't like affiliate links nor do they like sites comprised of mainly affiliate links.
without the "goto.php" links, you were simply a content site. with, you become an affiliate site.

Now, how do they know they're affiliate links when all links point to "goto.php"?
simple, goto.php gives them a 302 redirect through affwin. Alter it to become a 301 redirect and you'll have even more problems.

I'm not going to say how it should be done, but you need to stop google from hitting goto.php at all, or at least declare that you don't want them anywhere near it. If after that they do hit it, you've got to stop them from going any further.

Some affs have managed to get their goto.php in SERPS, so any click goes directly through goto and onto the merchants site.

I think this will be algo-ed out very soon (Google will not want to become a directory of affiliate links) so I wouldn't spend any time on trying to get those rankings. Instead try and make Search Engine algo's beleive you to be a content site again. Abit of research into what bots CAN follow will give you the answer pretty quickly.

[pcgiant]

Hi thanks for your reply I forgot to mention goto.php and awin are both blocked with robots.txt. This should have stopped google from finding the affiliate links. Maybe google has a new filter or something. either way they don't like api's.
:)

Google doesn't like affiliate links nor do they like sites comprised of mainly affiliate links.
without the "goto.php" links, you were simply a content site. with, you become an affiliate site.

Now, how do they know they're affiliate links when all links point to "goto.php"?
simple, goto.php gives them a 302 redirect through affwin. Alter it to become a 301 redirect and you'll have even more problems.

I'm not going to say how it should be done, but you need to stop google from hitting goto.php at all, or at least declare that you don't want them anywhere near it. If after that they do hit it, you've got to stop them from going any further.

Some affs have managed to get their goto.php in SERPS, so any click goes directly through goto and onto the merchants site.

I think this will be algo-ed out very soon (Google will not want to become a directory of affiliate links) so I wouldn't spend any time on trying to get those rankings. Instead try and make Search Engine algo's beleive you to be a content site again. Abit of research into what bots CAN follow will give you the answer pretty quickly.

[IntroSites]

Hi thanks for your reply I forgot to mention goto.php and awin are both blocked with robots.txt. This should have stopped google from finding the affiliate links. Maybe google has a new filter or something. either way they don't like api's.
:)

You may of blocked the aff links from being found but you are also telling them where they are hidden.