Let me try it this way…

If you leave your home to buy as coffee pot… would you go straight to Walmart, or would you go to some street corner, and ask someone where you could go to buy a coffee pot?

The ecommerce sites don’t have to have loads of related content (Although is helps a TON) since they are actually a vendor, selling a tangible product.

There is nothing tangible on an affiliate site – other than the INFO they write.

You DO NOT sell anything on an affiliate site!

Again, I do understand the difference between an affiliate and a direct sales site. I don’t know who buys stuff off my site or anything else about them. So what? I’m just trying to understand G’s logic behind their rankings of these two types of selling sites. Why do they believe that a lot of content, customer info, etc is required for affiliate sites (although not all off them) but not for ecommerce sites?

it seems to me that you can have a thin, spammy ecommerce site just as easily as a thin, spammy affiliate site. Why do they let the ecommerce sites get away it, but hammer the affiliates? Why is G viewing these sites so differently, when both are trying to accomplish the same thing, i.e., sell stuff to people?

Do you know your buyers names? Keep their info, market to them, process their credit cards or paypal charges?

Affiliate sites really do nothing other than teach people about, and tell people where they can buy stuff…

ECom actually handle the customer and the transactions, making affiliates true middlemen sites.

M

I still think that selling is selling, whether it’s directly or via an affiliate site. And I think most e-commerce sites nowadays are a combination – if they’re monetized, they are also acting as an affiliate. So why they have it easier than straight affiliate sites is still a mystery to me.

And there are some older affiliate sites that don’t have a lot of content but rank well in G. I haven’t been able to figure out why.

Affiliate sites are not anything like an ecommerce site…

In effect, they are more like a search engine, where all they do is tell people WHERE they can buy stuff, and send them on their way.

From phone numbers, to physical addresses, return policies, and people you can actually talk to and trust with SSL certificates, etc, e-commerce is a whole different type of website.

On the ecom sites I manage, there is very little blogging, social networking, etc… and the focus is much more in tune with advertising from vendors, testimonials from customers, deals, sales, newsletters etc.

The biggest difference are the tangible assets.

Affiliate sites guide the visitors to a product, the ecommerce sites actually provide and fulfill the product orders.

M

yes, I understand that these are different. But I’m curious about why G beats up on affiliate sites (these are just another form of e-commerce) for being “thin” but lets storefront/e-commerce sites get away with it. I don’t get it.

Please don’t confuse an ecommerce site with an affiliate site… They actually sell a product, whether their own or not.

I can almost promise you… if you remove ALL of your affiliate links and build product pages or items you actually sell to the visitors. Your own traffic will change dramatically!

Completely different animal!! Very different.

Mark