well said for this topic. I have been in affliate marketing for years and now found out that they uses it to increase their backlinks and serps??? Oh my god. but its not only this porblem that we had.
I belive that even if we provide leads and custmers do purchase thru the link under the affliate. Even if they remove it and take it as their own sales. Eventually not getting paid for it. Will you and i know? I do not feel thats it a fair deal anyway. But what to do but to live with it.

cheers
edward

Anyway, I do link back to advertisers’ privacy policy such as the one on Ebay Partners Network, with a nofollow tag, of course.

This used to be fairly hot topic of concern back when merchants 1st started putting energy into finding ways to use affiliates for SEO. For awhile there were several affiliate tracking solutions touting the fact that they had naked links, search friendly links, etc. One in-house tracking program in particular I remember – passing SEO juice was it’s main claim to fame. Using affiliates for free SEO benefits is still an issue to some degree, I just don’t hear people talking about it as much any more.

That sounds pretty shady to me, that a merchant would consider leveraging the SEO efforts of its affiliates, as well as marketing efforts (which is normal), in an affiliate marketing situation.

Ouch.

I will be wary of this now.