Datafeed Sites

[pokerextras]

What's a datafeed site? Can anybody post a url of a datafeedr site?

[Mike]

Build Unlimited Affiliate Datafeed eCommerce Stores • Datafeedr has a demo on it.

[pokerextras]

Don't those sites get flagged as duplicate content and deindexed?

[Michael Martinez]

Don't those sites get flagged as duplicate content and deindexed?

If 100 people sign up for an affiliate program that pushes data out in a generic feed and all 100 people publish that feed by itself, their sites will be recognized as thin affiliates. I don't know if they'll be de-indexed automatically but they won't have much chance of doing anything in the Main Web Index. Of course, some people use a lot of links to try to overcome that disadvantage.

However, let's say 25 of those 100 people incorporate that feed into some sort of CMS that uses a script to filter the data, or populate the pages with other content in addition to the feed. Now they're moving towards creating a unique, user-valued asset. But simply distinguishing a datafeed-populated site with unique boilerplate text and images, and injecting keywords for cities or age groups or whatever doesn't guarantee search engine success.

So let's say that 5 of our 25 of the original 100 affiliates go an extra mile and use the feed to complement or supplement unique, original content. Suppose these 5 innovators publish 10 articles a day and each article has a keyword-targeted widget that culls the datafeed for appropriate listings.

Now you're moving toward the high-value end of the spectrum. However, even that uniqueness may be insufficient to push the affiliate content to the top of the search results.

What do people say about these 5 sites? How do they link to those 5 sites? Are they mentioned casually? Are all their links embedded in link lists, margin links, footer links, and other suspicious linking locations?

We can all probably name a half dozen queries that are dominated by datafeed-populated sites in travel, accommodations, books, movies, games, etc. and the idea that a search engine might filter out most thin affiliates seems implausible. After all, what's the difference between Hotels.com and Priceline.com? Aren't they both affiliate sites?

Yes, they are. But they are branded affiliates. They have accrued value through news articles, forum discussions, blog articles, etc.

I have looked at many small niche industries where datafeed-populated affiliate sites rank well -- but all of them seem to have some sort of brand value within those verticals.

In my opinion, it's not the fact you're using a datafeed that gets you filtered. It's the fact you're not doing something to make your presentation of the datafeed valuable that gets you filtered.

[PTC]

Most sites I know that do this in gear/equipment niches are successful because they have existing traffic (usually forums) that is not search engine dependent. This gives the sites ability to display updated/real-time data to their visitors and it is a huge advantage to static content.

Good sites in the lodging industry do more of what michael suggests and mix in static data/content with the feed. Obviously if you are going to depend on organic traffic, the more unique content you have on the page the better off you will be. I'd start be making sure your title tags were different than those that you see on the site providing the data feed. From there move down the line of things you consider important to on-site SEO and try to make them unique from the feed. If all the key page elements are unique and then there is some datafeed content thrown in there someplace, I think you can compete in the SERPS.

[Michael Martinez]

It's really hard to talk about "sites powered by datafeeds" because they are done in many different ways. There are, for example, "news" sites that are powered by (news article) datafeeds. It's not just about selling products; a lot of advertising-dependent sites buy content from syndication services and dress it up.

We could go on all year describing different datafeed modes. If someone can package any sort of information, someone else will buy it or redistribute it.

[MJ]

Post # 14 by MM is such a great post - a true formula for how to make a great site.

[palcoup]

If you were making a few hundreds dollar a month and you were a newbie at that time well congrats. All you have to do is go back to it. You'll make more since now you're very knowledgeable at php.