a4u Blog

At the Online Marketing Show, I had a chat with a large paid search affiliate who spoke to one of the Google reps at length after the Google University.

We all know the love & hate relationship with Google and Affiliate Marketing.

Back in January 2005 Google announced that they will only show one ad, per URL per keyword. This forced out many arbitrage affiliates overnight and many of the remaining to diversify, however it also gave rise to desperate affiliates who would ‘hijack’ merchant URLS, or use other black hat affiliate marketing techniques to earn a quick buck.

On the positive side it actually lowered spend on adWords for content driven affiliates who add value to the mix.

As Google continues its drive for the best user experience, it was suggested that Google will be removing sites altogether whose core focus is to send traffic to the merchant through skeleton content landing pages.

Even meatier sites with the added comments, reviews, comparisons, ratings and news this may not be enough to stay ahead of their increasingly hard lined attitude towards affiliates and user experience. Perhaps they feel we just get in the way!

It’s an absorbing statement, and one that could have large consequences for the revenues of affiliate networks and paid search affiliates.

As a user it’s hard not to disagree with Google, as much as it hurts to say that as an affiliate. As you do have to question the value of paid search SERPS such as:

Position 1 www.abcmerchant-offers.co.uk

Position 2 www.abcmerchant-deals.co.uk

Position 3 www.abcmerchant-comparisons.co.uk

Position 4 www.abcmerchant-samedeals.co.uk

Whilst the above does have brand protection advantages, and yes if co-ordinated well by the merchant and network it can help conversions by displaying different product ranges I would still suggest that this does provide a poor user experience in most examples I've researched this morning.

It many cases it ironically provides landing page leakage for the brand as affiliates strive to work around Google guidelines.

On a side note, with closed groups and co-operation, the CPC costs paid to Google Adwords by affiliates, (ignoring any Google landing page quality penalties) have lowered dramatically from the days where affiliates were fighting it out to get to positions one through to six, often paying upwords of £5 per click for brand campaigns which naturally convert well.

Perhaps it’s a slap for networks and paid search affiliates who have carefully planned affiliate co-operation to lower adwords spend.