The newest version of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines for 2007 has surfaced and everyone in the SEO community is talking about it, so I thought I’d cover it from the affiliate marketing side of things. SEObook, Search Engine Land and A4U are discussing and it’s 43 pages long, so I’m pretty certain this is a legitimate doc.

What are the Google Quality Rater Guidelines? SEL explains “The documents are used by Google Quality Raters to aid them in classifying queries, measuring relevancy and rating the search results. To do so, the Quality Rater must understand how Google works and this document has a bunch of that.”

Please realize, the reason I share this is to help ETHICAL affiliates learn to rise up to Google’s standards or at least understand what they are - not to help unethical affiliates learn to be better spammers.

All of the sections I’m quoting are under a section titled “Types of Spam” which provides tips and tools on how to identify the various types of spam Google targets.

SNEAKY RE-DIRECTS - Page 38 (zoom to 150% to read) - Example uses a CJ affiliate link to illustrate what sneaky re-direct spam looks like.

“3. Compare the domain registrants for each URL. If you find that the two URLs have the same domain registrant, you will conclude that the page is not Spam. If they are different, it is probably Spam.

Example of a Sneaky Redirect:
http://www.kqzyfj.com/go65biroiq57A8E7A6577BDAA6
redirects to
http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/StoreCatalogDisplay/c-10101/s-10101/TID-
101?AID=1157440&PID=XXXXXXX (Note I Xed out affiliate’s CJ PID)

Using a whois provider, you will see that the domain registrant for the first URL is Commission Junction, while the domain registrant for the second URL is J.C. Whitney & Company.”

THIN AFFILIATES - Page 34 (definition for raters)

“3. Thin Affiliates - A thin affiliate is a page that exists to deliver a visitor to a page on another domain with a different owner. Keywords deliver visitors to the affiliate page, and links on the affiliate page deliver visitors to the second page, which is owned by a real merchant.”

There is more, so read the doc but the important distinction is that “The thin affiliate site contains text and perhaps images copied from the merchant site. It offers no (or very little) value-added service while earning its commission.”

RECOGNIZING THIN AFFILIATE SITES - Page 35

“Not all affiliates are thin. If a page offers some value in addition to its links to the merchant, then it is not a thin affiliate. For example, if the affiliate offers price comparison functionality, or displays product reviews, recipes, lyrics, etc., it is not a thin affiliate, and, therefore, not Spam.”

Then it offers 3 examples of affiliate sites that are not “thin” because they have price comparisons or other helpful shopping features: shopping.com, pricegrabber.com, kelkoo.co.uk

Note the doc above is from April 2007 but it’s the most current version anyone has gotten access too. This isn’t totally new, just a new updated version of the Rater’s Guide with different wording. Here is my blog post, the 1st time a similar doc surfaced back in 2005. Are you a THIN Affiliate? Google Does Not Like You!