Core Update - Affiliate Sites

Mehn!! I can't find any single clue on what to do with this update. I've simple deleted my analytics plug-in and focused on just posting contents, I don't have the strength to handle another Google Heart Break.

My info sites have largely remained stable throughout this update but my Amazon Affiliate website completely got shattered. They remove your site from the SERPs even though the content is still indexed.

Google has declared war against small-time affiliate marketers. Period!

This is just an ongoing effort from Google to "filter" out crappy and/or damaging commercial-intent content. It all started with the core algo update from December 2020.

Google is NOT targeting affiliate sites per se but the way affiliate marketers are used to publish content promoting affiliate products. And, to some extent, I agree it has gone overboard and something needed to be done!

The days when you can just republish the same information about a product from either amazing or the manufacturer itself are gone.

The days when you could also publish 200 articles targeting commercial intent keywords are also gone!

Focusing on solely publishing comparison articles where we just focus on repeating the same features, pros and cons, and another basic information one can get from a product page or from amazing it´s just not gonna cut it today.

I don't know if you have noticed but Google's main focus is to "force" webmasters into enhancing and improving the UX of their users and, one of the best ways to achieve this is through content that offers/adds value to the end-user.

Also, building sites on any YMYL niche has become even more difficult with this update as well.

I am interested in knowing for those running big affiliate sites that suffered a big hit what is your content ratio between informational and commercial articles?

I am going to venture to say those experiencing the biggest hit are those running affiliate sites where commercial articles are predominant over informational articles.

Roger Marquez said:

I am going to venture to say those experiencing the biggest hit are those running affiliate sites where commercial articles are predominant over informational articles.

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I am not quite sure how important is this alone. My content is say 10:1 valuable vs commercial content and this alone doesn't help much when Google decides to slap you. I think the overall user experience is important.

N1ckG2 said:

My content is say 10:1 valuable vs commercial content

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Damn!

Pure dedicated affiliate websites also got hit because of this update. It is a big blow to webmasters relying only on Google traffic.

achiever2011 said:

Pure dedicated affiliate websites also got hit because of this update. It is a big blow to webmasters relying only on Google traffic.

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info sites too, its not affiliate specific.

I would say my affiliate main site is 3:1 to the commercial side.

However some of the other sub sites I posted are pretty 1:1 and they've been hit significantly.

I'd argue at least two of them have really high quality and valuable content as well.

Now the update is finished, and there are little to no signs of recovery for my site(s)

Has anyone figured out what the reason for this is?

I can't figure it out, each SERP seems different, and it's just like they've punished my site's as a whole.

Any insight would be valued.

Mxty said:

Now the update is finished, and there are little to no signs of recovery for my site(s)

Has anyone figured out what the reason for this is?

I can't figure it out, each SERP seems different, and it's just like they've punished my site's as a whole.

Any insight would be valued.

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Nobody knows anything for sure. We can all just speculate and give our own opinions

Only one of my websites got hit by the update and lost all rankings but after one week everything is back. Feeling very lucky lol.

voica said:

Only one of my websites got hit by the update and lost all rankings but after one week everything is back. Feeling very lucky lol.

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how much organic traffic was lost/regained?

I just wanted to revive this topic again and see if anyone has any more insight.

One of my smaller affiliate websites seems to have recovered, but that's it. I don't know the rhyme or reason for this, it's pretty similar to the others.

Mxty said:

I just wanted to revive this topic again and see if anyone has any more insight.

One of my smaller affiliate websites seems to have recovered, but that's it. I don't know the rhyme or reason for this, it's pretty similar to the others.

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is it heavy in affiliate links? like 1 per page?

I have one site that has affiliate round up style articles that got wiped out by the product reviews update last year, mostly recovered, and then last month's update wiped it out again. I have other affiliate sites that aren't product roundups, affiliate links hidden from Google behind a funnel of a couple other pages, and generally those are doing even better. I think Google is cracking down more on sites with a bunch of product roundups that have the same information as the manufacturer and not much informational content.

kuruptseo said:

is it heavy in affiliate links? like 1 per page?

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I have a lot of "best" articles that compare like 5-10 amazon products, so some pages contain 5-10x affiliate links.

That being said though, most of the sites in the serps for the keywords I used to rank for still contain a similar amount of affiliate links, so I don't get it?

mw0 said:

I have one site that has affiliate round up style articles that got wiped out by the product reviews update last year, mostly recovered, and then last month's update wiped it out again. I have other affiliate sites that aren't product roundups, affiliate links hidden from Google behind a funnel of a couple other pages, and generally those are doing even better. I think Google is cracking down more on sites with a bunch of product roundups that have the same information as the manufacturer and not much informational content.

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Sorry double post.

How do you mean they aren't product round-ups?

Do you have content that links to e-commerce-like product pages that are no-indexed & have links to affiliates on them?