Recently, I came across a conversation in Google Webmaster forum regarding a penalty from google. He was getting 2k UV/day from google before the penalty. JohnMu (Google Employee) have replied about nofollow issues on the site and related with affiliate too. Looks like Google's Paid Link Schemes includes affiliate links. If you are getting solid traffic from Google, then it is time to reconsider affiliate links without nofollow tag.
The penalty specifically applies to paid links. Affiliate links are not links that your affiliate partner has paid for but if you are linking out to anyone you should probably place the no-follow attribute on the outbound link anyway.
Of course, always use nofollow tag for affiliates, especially if the links are site-wide.... Years ago (when I wasnt away of "nofollow" existence) I used to link to my affiliates without it and bever got a penalty, but it is different now. Plus no need to leak your rankings with dofollow links...
It is much better to mask / use a redirect for the affiliate link then to use NoFollow. Google can still follow the NoFollow link and find out where it goes.
I read about this earlier in the week but I don't think JohnMu's reply is clear enough to be a definitive answer. No follow the way it's intended is so links do not pass juice. However most affiliate links do not pass juice to the advertiser anyway as they usually go through the network domain as a redirect 1st anyway. Still if you are more comfortable no following affiliate links, then do it.
One of my sites was penalized last year with a -450 penalty. Since then I have changed the way I link to affiliates but still my site suffers from the penalty. Can you tell me if this is the correct way I should link to affiliates. 1. The link looks like this now - http://www.example.com/link/ 2. It looks like this in my htaccess file - Redirect 302 /link/ http://affiliateprogramexample.com/wm.asp?wid=12363 3. In my robots.txt file I have - User-agent: * Disallow: /link/ Is there anything I have missed or could be doing better? Thanks Troy
"Redirecting the affiliate links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file" This method is accepted by google and can see in google webmaster answer ID 66736
I've read that and feel as if I abide it, but I'm still penalized and still unsure whether the way I'm redirecting is the correct way.
Then I suggest you to add nofollow to the affiliate link (According to google it is the most acceptable form) and after doing that submit a re-inclusion form to remove penalty on your website.
Hmmm - I sometimes use fake 'affiliate links' to pass juice, without looking 'paid'. I find it is a good method & hasn't given me any problems so far. . .
You know, if everyone quite using proprietary tags like nofollow then Google would be hard pressed to bully the web. nofollow was created solely to help control user generated content spam. Google has twisted it to their own use. I say, "Down with nofollow!" FWIW, I don't, and have never, use nofollow tags.