Affiliate Redirected Products in Google Base

[Hero]

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I think, as with everything the big G states, it's ambiguous on purpose. Obviously, if the affiliate has customised the content the merchant provides in the feed and made it unique, there is no reason why they wouldn't be allowed to list. However, if your product pages consist of a replication of the product description as provided by the merchant in the feed, that could potentially be seen as product duplication. So it all comes down to each individual case, which is why it's been left gray in the directives, IMO

[John Jupp]

So basically Hero what you're saying is that for an affiliate to use a feed submitted to google base, we need to contact google first for approval? Otherwise they just say aarh! affiliate...unclean..

Keith thanks for the link to the terms btw. Couldn't find them on first look.

[John Jupp]

Please read the email below:

Hello,

Thank you for your email. Currently, we're unable to accept products sold
through commission or multi-level marketing programs. This includes
sellers who sell products through an affiliate marketing relationship,
sellers who drop ship orders through third-party wholesalers, and
independent distributors who sell goods offered within a cataloged
marketing program. These sellers' content may be crawled by and included
in Google's web search, but this content won't be included in Google Base.

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

[Gjmacd]

Please read the email below:

Hello,

Thank you for your email. Currently, we're unable to accept products sold
through commission or multi-level marketing programs. This includes
sellers who sell products through an affiliate marketing relationship,
sellers who drop ship orders through third-party wholesalers, and
independent distributors who sell goods offered within a cataloged
marketing program. These sellers' content may be crawled by and included
in Google's web search, but this content won't be included in Google Base.

Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

I got the same e-mail. Again, the point here is that they are NOT at all consistent with their rules. The rules are ambiguous as to make it easy for an "out" when someone points out that their big ad revenue players (Shop.com, eBay) are doing affiliate and pay-for-performance feeds in Google base.

I think getting around this is more about how you can craft your site to feed the data into Google Base, drag the traffic to your site, and work within the rules they set.

As a colleague recently pointed out: "Why is this bad for the merchant who gets the sale? Everyone wins."

I can't argue that point, however, I do understand Google's point of trying to not have people "SPAM" Google Base with links to affiliate based sites. However, if you poke around Google Base long enough, you'll see plenty of "affiliate" links by larger players who pay big money for AdWords.