Can a News Aggregator Widget Cause Ranking Trouble?

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

Message Too Old, No Replies

Can a News Aggregator Widget Cause Ranking Trouble?

dhaliwal

2:30 pm on Jul 31, 2009 (gmt 0)

We have received an invitation to join a news aggregator network who returns 150% - 200% of the traffic we would send to their site. But I am not sure if we put their Widget on our pages, what impact it can have on rankings.

They basically want you to add their widget to your website, and the widget has some interesting stories. Visitors click on whatever news stories they want. This system generates nice traffic, because our stories would also be included on other websites.

Has anyone has used a system like this?
Does anyone think this system can hurt or help Google rankings?

I declined the offer twice in the past, but this time I wanted to ask about it at WebmasterWorld.

Thanks in advance.

[edited by: tedster at 8:06 am (utc) on Aug. 1, 2009]
[edit reason] by member request [/edit]

tedster

8:12 am on Aug 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

One thing I would be wary of is whether the widget hides any links to the aggregator's website. That might bring up a bit of a problem. If the links are not hidden but visible to the user, and especially if they are nofollow, then I wouldn't wory about the links.

If the aggregator lets you serve the headlines from within an iframe, that would be a safety factor for you. It would keep the aggregator headlines from confusing Google's analysis of your own page's content.