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Latest Forum Threads
Google Merchant Search (beta)
We’ve just stumbled upon this one; this is a very interesting development depending on which direction and just how far Google takes it.
The screenshots are for the term 'secured loans'
After selecting the amount, it leads you to a number of lenders, showing loan details as you would expect and telephone numbers. According to Google searchers fill in their email address and telephone number and will receive a 'call back' from each of the lenders which can offer a loan according to their circumstances.
Rather than utilising their Paid Search advertisers, this currently appears to be a pure Pay Per Call service, again perhaps with a CPA deal attached?
What do people think of this kind of change to the paid search listings as both an advertiser and an affiliate? Is this going to become a serious threat or something to embrace?
Could this move into other top end CPA verticals such as mobile, broadband and insurance?
Backs
This article has been backed by the following people.
Look back over the years at the amount of times Google have launched a product or change, life and business still goes on and on and on
A few examples which come to mind are:
Stopping CPM and moving to CPC (circa 2002)
1 url per merchant
Quality score
and the list goes on
adapt or go get a job in Tescos
I don't see it as a major threat, in the short term at least. I've blogged about it from a finance affiliate's perspective here: http://www.finance-affiliate.co.uk/?p=28
There must be a law against them doing this - they've even violated their own character length on the title - where will it end!
Don't get me wrong, I am neither FOR or Against it, however anyone who did NOT see this coming has been asleep at the wheel.
If you share such such sensitive data to a 3rd party such as your conversion rates and your CPA, then somewhere along the line it's going to come and bite you in the ass.
and Deagle, from what I hear it's the SEM Agencies who have been pushing for this as a way of making an extra 10-15% of their clients search managed spend, and to by-pass the Lead Gen and Comparison players.
There's no laws against them from what I can see - they're not acting as brokers - and even so what's the cost of a consumer credit licence anyway?
The monopoly they have on internet searches is phenomonal - and there's very little that can be done whilst people enjoy using their search engine. Whether this will make them seem more commercial to people in an unacceptable way is up for debate.
Competition in the loans market has always been tough, just a shame they couldn't do this when things are on the up, rather than the markets we've been seeing of late!
I try and tell people OUTSIDE of affiliate marketing how powerful the big G are and they have no idea but if they move into this for other products then I am sure they will change the whole affiliate industry either directly or simply indirectly by means of less money going to comparison / voucher sites as merchants effectively do direct -eek!
Competition in the loans market has always been tough, just a shame they couldn't do this when things are on the up, rather than the markets we've been seeing of late!
I will also stop my CPA &CPC on google Adwords.
Google might get extra revenue from their new experiment...but they might loose out from all of us spending money on adwords.
Keep this sort of stuff up Google and your search share should begin to slide.
Keep this sort of stuff up Google and your search share should begin to slide.
It will be interesting to see how the comparison sites respond though. Maybe they'll start offering cashback as well as comparison? (MSN obviously rolled out something similar the other day as well).
I posted about it here:
http://blog.crowdstorm.com/google-merchant-search-is-the-end-for-price-comparison-sites/397