This is big news for affiliates. According to the new guidelines, Google is now placing a bigger emphasis on its knowledge graph style results, in addition to reputation, authority and advertisements. Webmasters now need to pass Google's E-A-T test: Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
One interesting note, specifically for affiliates: The reference to "thin" affiliate sites has been removed from the new guideliens. In the past, Google had warned that thin affiliate sites were not of high quality. Now, the theory is that Google believes spam affiliate sites wouldn't rank well in its new system anyway, and so the issue would take care of itself.
Google also expects all websites to now have "About Us" pages or something similar.
The bottom line: This is good news for affiliates who have sites with good content, a good reputation and good design.
Here is a copy of the new Quality Ratings Guidelines, which we have uploaded directly to the GPWA website:
www.gpwa.org/docs/google-search-quality-evaluator-guidelines-2014.pdf
Read this post by The SEM Post to find out what you need to know about the new guidelines.
The SEM Post has written a few follow-up articles on its original post, too.
-- All About Supplementary Content in the Google Quality Rater’s Guidelines
-- The Role of Reputation in the Quality Rater's Guidelines
-- How Google Views Advertising in Quality Rating Guidelines