The Terms of Service (TOS) for Google Analytics basically say that they can do whatever they want with the data they collect from your sites and this includes using that information to determine search engine rankings.

By installing the Google Analytics code on your site, you are giving Google a back door window into your traffic patterns and they will quickly determine that your (affiliate) site is not the kind of site they want in their index. You see, Google doesn’t really like affiliate sites. Perhaps I should qualify that assertion a bit more. Google doesn’t like little-guy affiliate sites; they don’t seem to have a problem with the big guys and large corporations running affiliate ads on their sites.

It’s a long time since I did any PPC advertising with Adwords but I hear the same thing from affiliates using it as an advertising platform. The “Google Slap” has affected thousands of such affiliates when they find that formerly successful campaigns suddenly command keyword bids of $5 when they used to cost a few cents or a few tens of cents.

The conclusion would seem to be that Google doesn’t appear to like little-guy affiliates. So some double standards appear to be in operation in how Google deals with little-guy and big-guy affiliates.

It makes a mockery of their supposed mission statement of: “First Do No Evil”.

I had an affiliate site with a Pagerank (PR) of 5 that has been online for 12 years. It attained its PR5 rank a few years back and stayed at that level all that time. Then, a couple of months ago it dropped to PR3. I couldn’t figure out why it had been demoted. It’s been an affiliate site for many years (albeit a content-rich one), the website hadn’t undergone any redesign that might have flagged it to Google. So I was at a loss to determine the cause of the PageRank drop. That was, until I came across some comments from other affiliates regarding the use of Google Analytics. You see, up until a few months ago, I was lazy in tracking the traffic to the site so I didn’t have any tracking code on it. And then I added Google Analytics. Shortly after, the site was demoted. Draw your own conclusions.

Ok, so Google set the rules and if we want to play we have to abide by them if we don’t want to have our Adsense accounts closed down. But there’s nothing in their TOS that says we, as affiliates, have to make it easy for them.

And that means not using Google Analytics to track the performance of your sites. There are other trackers and stats packages out there like Piwik, StatCounter or Clicky.

You may also want to consider whether to use Google’s Webmaster Tools and/or the Google Pagerank Toolbar in your browser. They’re not as hard to pin down as a source of data collection as Analytics so some affiliates think they’re ok to use.

The conclusion appears to be that if you want to have your affiliate site indexed, and stay in Google’s index, that using Google Analytics (and possibly Google Webmaster Tools and the PageRank Toolbar) is a bad idea.

Some other points:

Google has the power to drive a huge amount of traffic to your sites each month and they’re the biggest player in town in this regard. So, as affiliate webmasters, we need to appease Google by staying within their TOS.

Google doesn’t want affiliate sites in its index. Assuming you minimise the ways Google can collect data from your sites, they can still be recognised as affiliate sites and once Google knows that, they will in all likelihood get a lower ranking.

Google employs thousands of people to evaluate and review websites. Given the total number of websites online, these reviewers don’t spend more than a few seconds glancing at a homepage. Perhaps 1-2% of site reviews will involve a deeper look. So spending a bit of extra time on your homepage and the content on it is probably a good idea.

Conclusion

Despite Google’s lack of enthusiasm for affiliate sites, a large part of online ecommerce is done through them. Merchants like affiliates because they put their products in front of a wider audience. Google itself provides an affiliate program with Adsense. So they’re happy for webmasters to put Adsense on their sites to prop up Adwords. They like quality sites though and that’s one thing I agree with. But when it comes to webmasters putting ads for other ad networks in front of visitors, well…that’s a different story.

So, when you’re building a new site, here’s a suggestion: For the first 3 or 4 weeks, put Google Analytics on the site but do not put any ads or affiliate links on the site (no Kontera, Chitika or either). Have only good quality content on the site. That should be enough time for the site to get indexed and be flagged as a content site rather than an affiliate site.

Then remove Google Analytics (and the entry for the site from the Google Analytics dashboard) and replace it with tracking code from some other tracking service. Remove any Google metatags or verification HTML files (provided by Google Webmaster Tools) and start turning on your ads and affiliate links.

All the best,

Gary Nugent

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