Does Google Hate Datafeedr? Seems like kind of a weird question doesn’t it? For some reason believe it or not – that exact search phrase was in my top 10 results yesterday. There seems to be a lot of people googling for information related to that – probably because there’s been a lot of google penalties and de-indexing going around regarding datafeedr WordPress affiliate stores.

I wrote a series late last year called “How to Build an Affiliate Store in WordPress“. In that series, if you read all the articles – I was very specific about both creating original content AND how if you didn’t you would run the risk of a google penalty.

What is a google Penalty?

If you have a web site, it’s ranked in google on a ‘pagerank’ scale of 1-10. The higher your number, the greater your authority, the more searches you come up for, the more traffic you get, the more money you make. Google likes web sites and blogs with original content. Google likes stores with original content that sell their own products. Google hates affiliates that get a datafeed or some links and build an online store with no content and scraped or copied content just for the purpose of making affiliate commissions. To google you’re no better than a scalper or spammer. Google doesn’t mind if you have a site with original content where you link to, review, or suggest products – AS LONG AS your products DON’T OVERWHELM your content. If it does google calls you a “thin affiliate” site – heavy on affiliate links, and light on content.

IF Google finds you (and some sites go years without getting caught for some reason) to be a ‘thin affiliate’, any number of things could happen:

  1. You could get banned from adsense (if you use it on that site), or at least get your ads pulled from displaying on that site
  2. You could lose pagerank
  3. You could become “unranked” or pagerank zero
  4. You could remain ranked, but not show up in search results
  5. You could be unranked, appear in search results, but get no traffic
  6. You could could be temporarily (or permanently) removed from google search results altogether (deindexed)
  7. You could receive any of the above for 30, 60, 90, or 120 days – or even up to one year

I have received EVERY SINGLE ONE of the above penalties over the last 2 years on one of my web sites, and ALL OF THEM are now back on the google index and in good standing.

How do I keep My datafeedr affiliate store (or any site) from getting a google penalty?

If you have a datafeedr affiliate store in WordPress my advice to you is this. In your robots.txt file set your store URL to disallow indexing. Nofollow all links to your store. In your google XML Sitemap plugin setup enter your store URL to NOT be included in your sitemap. If you have been deindexed in google – request reinclusion and state that you have an affiliate store and set it up not to be indexed – only your original content (and you should get back in).

Don’t try and cheat google – and you won’t get the shaft, plain and simple. DO NOT RELY on a piss poor product store to get organic results and traffic in google to make you money. Rather – create a GREAT site with AWESOME original content and let IT DRAW the traffic, which will naturally visit your store (and make you money).

Why has MY datafeedr store FAILED?

I get this every now and again. 99% of the time a datafeedr store fails because a site or blog is centered around it. I have had clients in the past ask me to setup a datafeedr store, and then THEY DO NOTHING WITH IT, and wonder why they made no money. This is ONLY ok when you’re going to send paid traffic or do Adwords PPC to the datafeedr store. If you want to be indexed in google – you have to do all the normal things you would have to do for any site to be promoted online. Write content. Gain subscribers. Build Links. Get Authority. Get traffic. Make Money.

If you’re just looking to throw up a store and wait for the buckets of money to roll in…sorry. That doesn’t work in the real world – why the hell would it work online?