Affiliate links on mirrored sites - dangerous?

[polarmate]

Hi,

I am looking at a very strange situation. I have a potential affiliate whose web site generates a huge amount of traffic for his affiliates. He just revealed that he has one main site and 4 mirror sites. All but two pages on these sites are identical. If a surfer clicks on any link, however, s/he is always directed to the page on his main site even though that page exists on the mirror site. (I want to run away but he's considered to be big.) He claims that a few of his mirror sites are even found in the SERPs and neither he nor his affiliates have had any problems whatsoever with search engines. The index page of his main site is a PR6. I see one of his mirrored sites in the first page of Google for what I think may be his keywords phrase.

If and when he becomes my affiliate, he intends to put a link to my URL on a page which will be uploaded to all 5 sites. What would this bode for my site?

Stay away? Personally I would like to as the setup does not smell good. :rolleyes: But I need technical and sound reasons for suggesting that we stay away. Any thoughts?

PM

[scottiecl]

(I want to run away but he's considered to be big.)
This may not be technical but RUN!!! This sounds like a recipe for disaster.

This is bad on too many levels.

[scottiecl]

Oh and Happy Birthday Polarmate!

:bday:

[polarmate]

I was just going to post: "Is this a really stupid question?!" cos there were no takers for the longest time!

Thanks for the wishes. Like you, I too, have now lived half my life...Darn! I thought life expectancy for women was upped to 80!!

What I can't understand is that this guy with his 5 mirrored sites has been around longer than Google has. How come something so blatantly spammy has been ignored??

And guess what? ODP has TWO of his mirrored sites listed. But, they won't register my second site saying it's the same as the first. It's not - not in objectives nor content. There is one section of overlapping content - about our database product - but it falls within the 'allowable duplicate content.' And here is a guy with a 99% match in content on his pages (he keeps a couple of pages with differing content on each site) and he's allowed two listings! :mad:

Oh well!!
PM

[WebSavvy]

As the owner of the affiliate program, you have no editorial control over what your affiliates may do, therefore have no consequences to suffer.

It's the same as when people link to you. You have no control over who links to you. However, should you link back to them, this would be something you can control.

So, therefore, with the affiliate program being ran from your domain and this other site simply wishes to join, you'd not be in dangerous waters as far as I am concerned.

I've ran quite a few affiliate programs myself. In one particular affiliate program I had, I had an affiliate that lived in Bulgaria. This man was using hot credit cards and putting them through his affiliate link to me as orders, so he'd get the commission. After the 3rd one, and the email addresses were similar, we were able to prove what he was doing.

Long story, short version, he's been busted now.

My Bank gave me a list of countries where credit card fraud is high. I use this as my criteria, as to whether or not I will accept a potential affiliate based on his/her geographical location.

Hope this helps. If you'd like the list of countries to avoid, PM me and I will give you the list. :-)

- Deb

[polarmate]

Your reasoning makes a lot of sense, Deb. I was put off by the manner in which he operates as it violates some pretty basic rules/ethics - like Scottie pointed out. Well, Mr. Spam Personified is now signed up as an affiliate despite my deepest negative feelings. But victory is in my court as I was able to ensure that we will not link back to him. And reading your post after the fact affirmed that I was right on track! Felt really good!:)

thanks!
PM

[WebSavvy]

You're welcome PM. I also PM'd you the list as you asked. Hope it helps!

- Deb