Yes, any URL that has over 50,000 URL's should have a sitemap_index, within that xml sitemap index should have listed the other category specific URL sitemaps. These are best organized in the hierarchy of the website structure to reinforce your schematic URL structure.

Thank you Eric.  It's definitely a gray area, I had considered your suggestion about requesting the author change the source parameter to something other than affiliate- and that's a great idea too.

I welcome more dialogue on this from others who may have some input.

Occasionally some of our clients receive editorial mentions and links in which the author adds utm parameters to the outbound links on their blog. The links are always natural, never compensated, and followed.  However, they are sometimes listed as utm_source=affiliate even thought we have no existing affiliate relationship with the author.  My practice has been to ask the author to add a rel="norewrite" attribute to the link to remove any trace of the word affiliate.

I have read that utm parameters do not affect link juice transfer, however, given the inaccurate "affiliate" source, I wouldn't want Google to misunderstand and think that we are compensating people for followed editorial links.

Should I continue following this practice, or is it fine to leave these links as they are?

Thanks!

This is a great thread. I have been wondering the same. We frequently see situations in which a blog links to one of our clients within a post using a custom utm URL, often citing the utm_source=affiliate even though we don't have an affiliate relationship nor have we paid for these links.

We have been requesting that the author add a rel="norewrite" attribute to the link to block the utm from affecting the link. I've been wondering if this was necessary, or if the utm link is still passing juice to our target page (especially when the source is inacuurately labeled as affiliate)

should we continue requesting the norewrite attribute?

Hi Holger,

Duplicate content is typically qualified as identical, or similar, content across multiple pages (within a single domain or across other domains)--not duplication within a single page. The idea is that you're potentially spamming the search index with multiple results lacking contextual distinction.

Your particular case, however, puts your page's quality score at risk by extending the length of your page's content without added context or value (the repetition is more like keyword stuffing, if anything.) Rather than managing two identical DIV blocks, you should manipulate the positioning, sizing, styling, etc. of a single DIV block within each respective media query selector in your CSS.

Here's a helpful tutorial with examples: http://bit.ly/ncY2HY

Yes, any URL that has over 50,000 URL's should have a sitemap_index, within that xml sitemap index should have listed the other category specific URL sitemaps. These are best organized in the hierarchy of the website structure to reinforce your schematic URL structure.