Google Updates Webmaster Quality Guidelines

May 25th, 2006

Just a quick post. As many SEO consultants do, we monitor Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines closely to glean any information and try and read into the subtext of any changes made. Well a few new bullet points have just been added today:

• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
• If a site doesn’t meet our quality guidelines, it may be blocked from the index. If you determine that your site doesn’t meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and request reinclusion.

Nothing that really effects our clients.. but a warning to those who expect their site to rank well that it needs unique content, not just displaying products from another site. After all why should Google index an affiliate site that doesn’t provide anything more than the official site does?