Appreciate the comment since this post could have been written yesterday as there’s still the same problem with affiliate content.

My Amazon stores still have ten’s of thousands of pages indexed in Google, but they don’t rank particularly well. Basically Google is happy to index some of this content (not all of it) and so with a Amazon store that has the potential of having over a million pages indexed, you’ll find a few thousand or even over 10 thousand for a well linked site. Indexing does not mean a site will rank well though.

So it’s not an indexing problem per se, but a ranking one and if someone created a new Amazon store today at first it would act like any other new site, but as time passes and you’d expect to see good rankings, nothing happens.

For my Amazon sites that at one point had a load of traffic they eventually are penalised by Google, this is a rankings penalty not an indexing problem.

Some people might consider a Amazon store with 5,000 pages indexed and receiving a few hundred search engine visitors a day a success, but I know from experience a site with 5,000 unique product type pages of content should be pulling in thousands of search engine visitors a day when the sites been even poorly SEO’d and time has past for links to pass full benefit.

So if you have a well indexed affiliate content based site) like an Amazon store) and only receive hundreds of visitors a day, it’s probably penalised.

David Law

I realize your post was quite awhile ago, but I’ll go ahead and post about this subject.

I am working with a company that has been testing the past 2 years for affiliate marketing sites getting listed in search engines. They are also working the same system for Ebay and Amazon sites for natural search.

The system is working better than expected. I already have a number 1 position in Google for a keyword phrase, and several other first page rankings in about 12 other search engines I checked. This is for affiliate advertising and the site I’m displaying is an affiliate site.

The eBay sites are being indexed pretty fast. Both eBay sites have nearly 800 pages indexed and these domains were brand new as of this past May.

The Amazon sites are getting indexed even faster. Of the 5 domains 3 have nearly 200 pages indexed and these domains were brand new as of October. Yes, just 1 month ago!

These system are ran with RSS Feed. They get fresh content every 24-72 hrs. It’s all push button easy.

Up to 5,500 keywords or pages, per site.

It’s really an incredible system.

If you want more info on this please feel free to email me and we can discuss this in length.

Yours in success,
Randy Hogan

Guess I’m one of many who would love to have a peak on Google’s kitchen from time to time.. :S

I’ve been doing the same, just writing up good articles on my blog, and then tagging, pinging and getting backlinks for it.

It’s working for me, so I hope it works for you pal.

Keep in touch,
T.M. Harris

It’s all about publishing unique, fresh, valuable content as often as possible, plus key phrase optimization, plus one way back links, plus using multiple marketing channels through email, RSS, blogs, forums, web2.0 … The days of the banners and the easy money have long gone. Even AdSense profits will get tougher to earn.

I enjoyed the time spent on your blog, Dave.

What’s your take on pay per play audio ads? It seems to me that, for better or worse, this form of advertising was inevitable.

Thanks.

i allow restaurants to advertise on my web sites – using video and e-mail and listings and the restaurants pay me in food — i take the food they owe me and sell it at 50% of the menu value — i have been doing this for 8 years.

i would love to know how to get ranking on google for the key words atlanta restaurants –

any help or suggestions welcome — thanks again – joe somerville

I have tried the Google friendly content that links to affiliate content (something similar to your idea anyway) and it works well on a page by page basis.

The only problem with this marketing approach is it takes a lot of work, so you don’t benefit from the thousands of easy SERPs you can get when adding say a 10,000 page Amazon affiliate store (couple of hours work).

Basically if Google didn’t ban Amazon affiliate sites you could easily pull in 10K extra visitors a day in under 8 weeks to an Amazon store IF it was added to an existing site that was doing quite well (doesn’t work with new sites).

To match this you’d have to create thousands of content rich pages that are unique. It’s not worth it for the revenue from Amazon sales (under 10%), now if you can find affiliate products that give a better return (30%+) then it might be worth it.

What I’d like to try is find a struggling online retailer with a lot of products and move their shop onto one of my sites that’s doing well. Based on what happens when I’ve added an affiliate store to these sites I’d expect almost instant success (thousands of new visitors a day).

So far not found anyone with a large product range that’s interested in the idea!

With regards your AdSense question, Google doesn’t work that way. The reason why affiliate sites are banned isn’t because they run AdSense ads, but because they use duplicate content. I have Amazon stores that don’t have AdSense ads (have no ads) and they also got banned.

David