joined:Oct 22, 2002
posts:150
msg #:168:01 am on Apr 26, 2004 (utc 0)
I read a Mike Grehan interview with Jon Glick? The upshot on the aff thing, or the argument/pretext ;) put forward was that Y took the view that if you have 3 or 4 hundred sites all trying to sell the same thing all vieing for first position then the value to the search engine user could be diminished via lack of 'real' choice.
The reality is that some aff sites are better than those they actually sell the products for. Granted some are not so good, but to simply take a carte blanche your-site-exists-to-earn-a-commision-and-is-therefore-unwelcome is imo, a little sad and has the potential to exclude 1000000's of useful pages that add real value overall.
I know of one hotel provider who shows little if any supplemental information other than the name of the establishment, location, description, photo etc.
One of their affiliates, took their content, and decided to add stuff like, calculating distances to local attractions, airports, train stations etc, offering visitors the option of writing area reviews, hotel reviews. The net effect of their actions are that the pages created as a result are in fact of more use than those that they 'exist' to provide traffic too.
All of that effort took months of planning and research. Are they in the Y!ndex? Nope, they are not. Why? well good question. I'd assume that its because someone decided that they only existed to provide sales to a 3rd party, that someone being a misguided reviewer with a mishapen view of what is and what isnt useful content...
- You have a high ratio of original content to content that can be found on other sites
The reality is that in the example provided it does indeed have content found elsewhere. It also supplements and adds value to that content, yet put against that particular quote it would appear that added value isn't wanted. How does this benefit the user?
Anyhow, the moral of this story is that the owners of this particualr site simply found an alternative way back in to Y index using the same content wrapped up in various flavours and guises and IP addresses.
These people arent rocket scientists and Im sure that many other people will employ similar tactics..the end result is, that Y! just ends up full of multiple websites when if it had applied things fairly, it might not be faced with the spam assualt its likely to get....
Replys....
""or if the main purpose is to channel visitors through their site on to another site where they will collect a commission on a sale. "
This is the way some of us make our living. I used to think Yahoo was rising above Google, but if Yahoo feels this way about my affiliate sites it is going to sink to the bottom fast as there are a lot of affiliate webmasters that provide search traffic "
"I design sites for people to shop at. The content is the variety of products along with descriptions, prices etc of the product. To say this isn't what the shoppers are looking for is very naive. By blackballing affiliate sites, Yahoo is turning away all shoppers"
posted by Jen @ 8:36 AM
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