Does Google Hate WordPress Datafeedr Affiliate Stores?
Datafeedr is a WordPress plugin that manages the data sources or affiliate product lists to build a store within a blog. I wondered the other day: Does Google hate the data feed? It seems like a strange question, doesn’t it? Not really, because I saw a series of posts about Datafeedr along with the words “penalty” and “deindexing”. Those are the types of blog and forum posts you see when Google starts targeting something in its index.
It happened with the MFA (Made for AdSense) website and it happened with BANS (Build a Niche Store). Google saw people actively building many websites that they thought were “thin affiliate sites”, or sites that mostly have affiliate links and have no real original content (or value). When this happens, Google looks for a definable fingerprint, like a “driven by” link or something in the code. Then Google adds it to the algorithm, and the following days, all sorts of people with sights that were in Google’s last target group suddenly found themselves with little to no traffic.
So my answer is: Google doesn’t hate Datafeedr as a WordPress tool or plugin, not even the people who use it. What Google hates is people who abuse it, creating thin affiliate sites, and having no real value or content.
What is a Google penalty?
If you have a website, it is ranked in Google on a scale of ‘pagerank’ from 1 to 10. The higher your number, the higher your authority, the more searches you do, the more traffic you get, the more money you get. Google likes websites and blogs with original content. Google likes stores with original content that sell their own products. Google hates affiliates who get a data feed or some links and build an online store without scraped or copied content and content just for the purpose of making affiliate commissions. To Google, you are no better than a scraper or a spammer. Google doesn’t care if you have a site with original content that you can link to, review, or suggest products to, as long as your products don’t overwhelm your content. If so, Google calls it a “thin affiliate” site, with lots of affiliate links and little content.
IF Google considers you (and some sites go years without being discovered for some reason) to be a ‘weak affiliate’, a lot could happen:
1. You could get banned from AdSense (if you use it on that site) or, at the very least, your ads won’t show on that site.
2. You could lose your pagerank
3. You could be “unranked” or with a zero pagerank
4. You could still be ranked but not appear in search results.
5. May not be ranked, appear in search results, but get no traffic
6. Could be temporarily (or permanently) removed from Google search results (de-indexed)
7. You can receive any of the above for 30, 60, 90, or 120 days, or even up to a year.
I have received only one of the above penalties in the last 2 years on one of my websites, and now they are all back in Google’s index and in good shape.
How do I prevent my Datafeedr affiliate store (or any site) from receiving a penalty from Google?
If you have a Datafeedr affiliate store on WordPress, my advice is this. In your robots.txt file, configure your store URL to disallow indexing. Don’t follow all the links to your store. In the Google XML Sitemap plugin settings, enter your store url so that it is NOT included in your sitemap. If you have been de-indexed on Google, please request reinstatement and indicate that you have an affiliate store and set it to not be indexed, only your original content (and should be re-entered).
Don’t try to fool Google, and you won’t get the hub, plain and simple. DON’T TRUST a shoddy product store for organic results and Google traffic to make money. Rather, build a great site with awesome original content and let it REMOVE the traffic, which will naturally visit your store (and earn you money).
Why are data feed stores not ranked well?
I understand this from time to time. 99% of the time, a Datafeedr store fails because a site or blog focuses on it. In the past, some people asked me to set up a Datafeedr store, and then they did nothing about it and wondered why they weren’t making money. This is only fine when you are sending paid traffic or doing AdWords PPC to the Datafeedr store. If you want to get indexed on Google, you have to do all the normal things that you would have to do to get any site promoted online. Write content. Get subscribers. Build links. Get authority. Get traffic. Earn money.
If you’re just looking to launch a store and wait for the buckets of money to arrive … sorry. That doesn’t work in the real world, why would it work online?