Amazon & Google... in bed together?

ThopHayt

ThopHayt

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I've noticed that Amazon keeps getting stronger and stronger as Google updates and as time goes on. Is Google doing this on purpous, or is Amazon DOING something intentionally (or unintentionally) SEO-wise that is giving them such pull? And if they are, can we figure out what it is.
 
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I've been seeing a lot more amazon, ebay, etc links in the top 10 for product searches, IMO google changed the algorithm to make it so--I don't think amazon and/or ebay are doing anything "special". The pages can still be outranked with a high-powered site, but it's a pain in the ass in some cases. A lot of people think it's google forcing the little guys out of the top 10 to force them to use PPC to get visits, but I can't say I agree or disagree--still doing testing to come to my own conclusions, as it is still possible to outrank them, but takes some different strategies to get there these days.
 
They have good authority, they provide a excellent service, naturally get backlinks, and have great reviews.

This is why Google ranks them high.
 
I disagree... I think a LOT of it is stupid black hatters doing the work for them for free trying to rank affiliate crap.

Patel said:
They have good authority, they provide a excellent service, naturally get backlinks, and have great reviews.

This is why Google ranks them high.
Click to expand...

Th3T3chGuy said:
It is as simple as that.
Click to expand...
 
ThopHayt said:
I disagree... I think a LOT of it is stupid black hatters doing the work for them for free trying to rank affiliate crap.
Click to expand...

The were the first ecommerce store to have an affiliate program and they are still the largest and most profitable which has contributed to their authority no doubt. However they recently changed their TOS with affiliates in a way that forces some affiliates who had been cloaking their links to use naked links instead. This might be part of the reason they seem to be flooding the SERPs more lately.
 
Not to say that , each affiliate creates relevant backlinks for them sometimes on very High Pr domains.

For example you're an amazon affiliate, let's say you are promoting Dolls, then you get an EMD like buy-dolls.com or something similar, you put a lot of articles concerning the subject then you linkback to them. After that you start your seo building linkwheels etc.. All of these pointing to your site that will point To Amazon. Their affiliates are doing the seo for them I guess. This is why they are popping up every time you are searching for a product.
 
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LBrown said:
The were the first ecommerce store to have an affiliate program and they are still the largest and most profitable which has contributed to their authority no doubt. However they recently changed their TOS with affiliates in a way that forces some affiliates who had been cloaking their links to use naked links instead. This might be part of the reason they seem to be flooding the SERPs more lately.
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So now clocked links aren't allowed?

For example phpzon plugin still uses cloacked links.
 
moonlighsunligh said:
So now clocked links aren't allowed?

For example phpzon plugin still uses cloacked links.
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From here:

30. You will not cloak, hide, spoof, or otherwise obscure the URL of your site containing Special Links (including by use of a redirecting page) such that we cannot reasonably determine the site from which a customer clicks through such Special Link to the Amazon Site.
Click to expand...

I've never used phpzon so I can't comment on that but I had to change a lot of my sites. I ended up using far less links to Amazon because of it.
 
Check out some of Amazon's reviews. Especially for items with different models/versions, such as GPS devices, they use reviews from the wrong model on a consistent basis. Besides the whole ranking issue, beware if you ever buy anything on Amazon. The reviews they display may not have anything to do with what you want to buy.
 
Yeah, by quality Amazon shouldn't be as high as it is... it's a LOT to do with stupid IMers doing free SEO for Amazon because they're affiliates. If you dug around I bet you'd find a ton of dirt in their backlinks.

I'd also bet that Amazon is immune to Negitive SEO. They have WAY too many crap links from affiliates from back in the pre-panda days. Should have HURT them, right? But nope. I am suspicious that Google helps them out.

We need to do a COMMUNITY collective dig around on Amazon's backlinks and see if we can figure out WHY and HOW they are ranking.
 
Because backlinks are such an important part of the ranking equation, Amazon has their ranks solidified by affiliates.

Do a search in Google for: Syma-S107-S107G-Helicopter-Red

The search above should link to the page of: http://www.amazon.com/Syma-S107-S107G-Helicopter-Red/dp/B004A8ZRBA

Now enter that raw URL into Google and search. You will find about 202,000 results mostly coming from Amazon.

Amazon references this product throughout their website with different parameters such as: http://www.amazon.com/Syma-S107-S10..._m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1SREC9QBCNXC3JE2AZ6K

Now, search in Google using an affiliate URL to link to the page. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A8ZRBA

You will see many citations and URLs on external sites which link to this product through the affiliate URL.

Now, the affiliate code returns a 405 error with most header checkers as a cookie is not set. So how they heck does Amazon get link juice from affiliate links? Using a canonical tag of course.

Code: 
<link rel="canonical" href="[URL="http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/view-source:http://www.amazon.com/Syma-S107-S107G-Helicopter-Red/dp/B004A8ZRBA"]http://www.amazon.com/Syma-S107-S107G-Helicopter-Red/dp/B004A8ZRBA[/URL]" />

Every time an affiliate links to an Amazon product, they are giving Amazon a backlink.
 
ThopHayt said:
We need to do a COMMUNITY collective dig around on Amazon's backlinks and see if we can figure out WHY and HOW they are ranking.
Click to expand...

Why wouldn't you just assume they are manually trusted like other (wikipedia) sites?

This is the 3rd BHW thread today with the words "Google" and "Amazon" in the title.
 
assphuck said:
So how they heck does Amazon get link juice from affiliate links? Using a canonical tag of course.

Code: 
<link rel="canonical" href="[URL="http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/view-source:http://www.amazon.com/Syma-S107-S107G-Helicopter-Red/dp/B004A8ZRBA"]http://www.amazon.com/Syma-S107-S107G-Helicopter-Red/dp/B004A8ZRBA[/URL]" />

Every time an affiliate links to an Amazon product, they are giving Amazon a backlink.
Click to expand...

If Google wants to start cracking down on "black hat" then why not start with this? Seems REALLY easy to find.
 
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