[Greenguy]

From AVN Business News: Google Issues Stern Warning to Affiliate Sites

Here's a couple pieces of the article that got my attention:

Originally Posted by AVN Business News: Google Issues Stern Warning to Affiliate Sites (Jan 30 2014)

Posted Monday (Jan 27) by Search Quality Team member Chris Nelson, the post reads, "Our quality guidelines warn against running a site with thin or scraped content without adding substantial added value to the user. Recently, we’ve seen this behavior on many video sites, particularly in the adult industry, but also elsewhere. These sites display content provided by an affiliate program—the same content that is available across hundreds or even thousands of other sites.

"If your site syndicates content that’s available elsewhere, a good question to ask is: 'Does this site provide significant added benefits that would make a user want to visit this site in search results instead of the original source of the content?' If the answer is 'No,' the site may frustrate searchers and violate our quality guidelines. As with any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take action, including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of our users’ search results. If you have any questions about our guidelines, you can ask them in our Webmaster Help Forum."

Originally Posted by AVN Business News: Google Issues Stern Warning to Affiliate Sites (Jan 30 2014)

...many of Google's consistently top-ranked sites are also huge affiliates, sending much-needed traffic to producers who have seen their ability to wring profit from their porn wane over the years. Many of these sites are top-ranked adult tube sites that are some of the most-trafficked web properties in the world, popular because they contain vast amounts of free content presumably uploaded by people who have the right to disseminate the content...

Originally Posted by AVN Business News: Google Issues Stern Warning to Affiliate Sites (Jan 30 2014)

Not all affiliates are equal, either, and there are undoubtedly more than a few webmasters who appreciate Google's efforts to make affiliates more attentive to providing tangible value to the end-user, thus attempting to weed out the good from the bad...

In a nutshell, from what I'm reading, if you have a tube site that's loaded with vids provided by an affiliate program, you're traffic from Google is gonna drop, if not go away altogether.

If that's the case, then the question becomes:
What will take the place of these tube sites in the rankings?

My Answer: I know I'm not alone around here when I say that I hope Google goes back to liking our Link Lists & Free Sites, because I think most of them do fall into the class of sites/pages that "provide significant added benefits that would make a user want to visit this site in search results instead of the original source of the content" due to the unique descriptions that are used in the reviews (for LL's) and marketing (for FS's).

I'll admit that I've yet to click on any of the external links in the article to areas in Google's Webmaster areas, but that's next on my list...right after my nap

So what are everyone's thoughts on this? Can anyone add any new info? Links to helpful sites/pages on this topic?

This article is over a week old, so this may not be new news to some of you, but seeing as I haven't seen any posts about it, I thought I'd start a discussion