Google's Human Quality Evaluation: How To Spot Offensive Sites & Google's Whitelist - Henk van Ess's Search Bistro: "How does Google decide if a site is offensive or not? They hate affiliates without original content."
The post continues with a screenshot of detailed instruction of what Google are instructing their human site inspectors to look for. In particular listing lots of products without any content is highlighted. You need reviews and price comparisons.
The problem is that prices change on vendor sites fairly often, so it is hard to keep track of that kind of content. It would be good if affiliate services provided a price comparisson search, so that affiliates could be sure they were offering good prices. That doesn't cover added value though like service - I look for good money back guarantees on all products I list.
I would be interested in when sites are reviewed. If it is when they first enter the database, it would partially explain why sites can drop in rating a few days after entering the database.
