I wrote about some Google News a couple of days ago – it seems Google is spelling out to affiliates which sorts of “common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior” to avoid if they hope to be indexed.
The whole issue comes down to whether an affiliate adds value to the Google search results.
Anyhow, I’ve since received the following from an individual who claimed to be on the Google payroll to sniff out “thin affiliate” techniques.
I was one of those Google search quality folk. It’s not clear in your article, so I thought I should pass on that the search quality team do not, and do not cause, any sites to be manually removed from Google. Their efforts are purely to help the engineers tweak the algorithm to stop such pages appearing.
As a super-affiliate, and a frequent searcher, I applaud Google’s approach.
In general…Thin Affiliate Doorway Pages are basically spam, they are made by folk seeking a quick buck from as little effort as possible, they add nothing to the experience of web searchers, they don’t help merchants, and they tend to use black hat SEO techniques.
Although I do well from Thin Affiliate Doorway Pages myself, I’d rather they all disappeared, and all affiliates were forced to be really useful to merchants and consumers.
He requested anonymity, as he said he is still working with them. Interesting stuff – just more mystery into that elusive Google algorithm.