Seems like the amount of affiliate links is the issue. I guess it's hard for search engines to tell the difference between spammy review sites made for affiliate links and the author's site.
I can't tell the difference between this and a spammy review site just for affiliate links. He's paraphrasing the main points in amazon reviews in a short paragraph and putting a link at the bottom. I don't really see what I gain from this vs just looking at popular products on amazon directly.
I weed out the products that have excessive fake reviews, above-average prices and some other interesting "tells" that I've discovered (e.g. the 4-star reviews are amended 1-star reviews that have been changed because the customer received a replacement product).
Thanks for the reply. I do see how you could have honed a knack for picking out particular tells like those, that knowledge isn't going to be immediately obvious to most consumers.
I considered this and decided to withhold affiliate links for the first couple months of the site's existence. It didn't seem to make much of a difference one way or another.
