New Google Adwords Quality Score

[Pokerman]

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I'm wondering how many people have been affected by the new Adwords system?
I have noticed a couple of big affiliates from this board are no longer displaying ads for search terms they were using a couple of days ago.

Shoemoney posted a good tip that could help some people here:

I have 2 ways to link to AzoogleAds Ring tone offers.

http://c.azjmp.com/az/ch.php?f=3375&i=10825 –> THIS IS BAD

OR

http://shoemoney.com/link.php?go=3375 –> this is GOOD!

Then of course in your robots.txt you disallow link.php

Has anyone else had problems with Google? What are people doing to avoid the problem?

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Thanks for putting me onto Shoemoney, not seen that blog before so now in favourites. I've been hit hard. I must admit that the majority of my portals are just standard landing pages featuring lists of shops all with unmasked affiliate links so wil be looking at trying to get some redirects or some other method up and running soon.

Used to be getting shed loads of traffic at 3p, google now wants minimum 20p to start showing same adds. While I still make a profit at around 25p epc it's hit home hard.

Lucky I've got savings to weather me through the storm ahead.

Mike

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Points to Note: Maybe?

> The Google Algo is Looking at Your View Source Code

> The Penalization of Affiliate Links (Finger Printing) ... so make sure you mask your links .. Do Not link with your affiliate code. Make sure you have your own internal redirection system.

http://YourDomainName.com/link.php?go=Whatever

> in your robots.txt you disallow link.php & rel="nofollow" on masked links.

> Ensure you have a clearly defined privacy policy (Robot Friendly & Easily Accessible)

> Ensure you have a contact details page with full address, telephone number & email. (Robot Friendly & Easily Accessible)

> Avoid standard sized Banners & Creatives. Maybe even host creatives yourself or mask the src. Basically Mask any code that could be attributed to an affiliate network or PPC Search Engine.

> If you arbitrage with PPC Search Engine Listings , avoid repetive pattern like you see on many sites. Build Content around them, even if Gobbledygook.

> Increase Content to Banner (Image) Ratio

> However Google will also know names of existing advertisers & those which have affiliate programs, so reading a number of merchants on your page (keyword density) will flag that you are possibly an affiliate. Not sure on the solution to this, maybe merchants name is an image or javascript & avoid mentioning merchant name in copy or url. But this is a last measure.

> I am wondering if they are arbitrarily trying to ascertain if the site has a secure checkout. If not the same domain, then bridge page (see below) or a checkout which goes to a secure set up https. Would it then mean creating the illusion of one or A real one for a silly advertsing fee. So even though the focus of your site is not actually selling anything, you physically can.

> Remember Application Forms or Checkouts on different URL's they seem to be making an assumption that the original landing page is a bridge page.

> Don't Use Google Adsense. There are alternatives. Otherwise you are just aiding & abetting them.

> Create Your Own Search Engine & Promote To Your Use Base. By detecting if the referrer has come in from Google & promoting your own Toolbar to replace theirs. Opt in off course & complying EULA's.

P.S. If your a really rich affiliate & spend circa £500k plus a month, you might be one of the privileged few affiliates who have access to their beta servers before roll out of any changes to test your current campaigns .... The ones who don't post here

[axod]

On the plus side, my adSense earnings seem to have doubled, on same traffic . I guess higher bids are the reason.
I haven't really seen any change in adwords though for my keywords.

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Is there a .asp equivalent of using php redirects.

I;ve found the code below (not sure if it works) but my sites are hosted on a microsoft server which only facilities asp I think....

<?PHP
if ($o == "l1") {$link = "http://www.google.com";} // Default link
if ($o == "l2") {$link = "http://www.yahoo.com";}
if ($o == "l3") {$link = "http://forums.digitalpoint.com";}
if ($o == "l4") {$link = "http://blog.findinforums.com";}
header("Location: $link");
// Jump to the hiddden affiliate URL above
exit();?>

You should then be able to change your affiliate link to read something like
<a href="links.php?o=l3">my link</a>

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Well, just remembered that I actually have a php server as well! Not being very technically inclined however I have been trying to set up the above script but to little avail.

I for one as I'm sure many other basic non techie affiliates on here would appreciate if someone could show exaclty how to set up php / and or asp redirects to get around the affiliate link nightmare that google has now kicked up.....

Many thansk in advance to your kind souls

Mike

[Fraser]

You seem to have a half scrap of code there but for php you would do something like

<?php

$o=$_GET['o'];

if ($o == "l1") {$link = "http://www.google.com";} // Default link
if ($o == "l2") {$link = "http://www.yahoo.com";}
if ($o == "l3") {$link = "http://forums.digitalpoint.com";}
if ($o == "l4") {$link = "http://blog.findinforums.com";}
header("Location: $link");

// Jump to the hiddden affiliate URL above

exit();

?>

and save that as links.php on your server.

[Reddy]

For ASP, you could use the following:

o=request.QueryString("o")

''' default url if no match for o found
url="http://www.myhomepage.com"

select case o
	case "l1"
		url="http://www........"
	case "l2"
		url="http://www........"
end select
response.redirect(url)

Don't forget to surround with the asp < % % > tags
HTH
David

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Thanks fraser.

I've updated the code, but still don't seem to be able to get it to work.

Here's my two pages.

http://www.mobilephoneforum.co.uk/test.html

and my links page with the php script you wrote above.
http://www.mobilephoneforum.co.uk/links.php

Am I missing the boat here ?

Thanks too david, but that's alittle confusing for me. Do i need to create a links.asp page for your code. And is that the code as I put it it the page ? Please forgive me for being such a dumbass, but I have never touched php or asp in my life so haven't got a scobby doo what all this does really...

Will be learning soon though

Thangs again guys for your help

Mike

[Fraser]

Hi Mike

I'm not sure where you have gone wrong I've uploaded the same file to

http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/links.php

and it works fine

http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/links.php?o=l2

Did you just upload that as the entire content of the file. i.e. open in notepad paste in that code, save as links.php then upload or have you added it to an HTML page? I think it looks like you may have placed it on an HTML page.

[EyeOfTheTiger]

Fraser,

You are a boy wonder!

I'd been a numpty and pasted that code into new dreamweaver file with all the crap that goes around it body etc etc.

Having pasted and uploaded into notepad as you suggested above it works a treat. Got a bit of updating on my site to do now as the sites I want to change are on my asp server.

DOes anyone know the dummies guide of how to do this with exact code to uase for asp servers ?

Many thanks gain fraser. Will have to get you more than a few beers at the next g2g when back off my travels

Mike

[Fraser]

No problem Mike - just glad you got it sorted in the end

As for ASP, I don't have a clue!

[sgpratley]

> in your robots.txt you disallow link.php & rel="nofollow" on masked links.

I've seen some suggestions that Google ignores the robots.txt file anyway in many cases.

It probably won't be long before google starts penalising this, if it hasn't done so already, even though there are plenty of good user & technical reasons for doing it.

A fair number of examples
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=goo...res+robots.txt

[Reddy]

For the ASP version, copy the code from my post above into a new asp file - don't forget to start the file with < % (no space between the < and %) and put % > (again no space between) at the end of the file.

You will also need to change the urls (h t t p : // w w w......) to something meaningful.

Save the file as links.asp, then use the following code in your webpages to link to the new hidden links:

<a href="links.asp?o=l1">link 1</a>
<a href="links.asp?o=l2">link 2</a>

Any probs, let me know.
David

[3wdl]

Fraser,

You are a boy wonder!

I'd been a numpty and pasted that code into new dreamweaver file with all the crap that goes around it body etc etc.

Having pasted and uploaded into notepad as you suggested above it works a treat. Got a bit of updating on my site to do now as the sites I want to change are on my asp server.

DOes anyone know the dummies guide of how to do this with exact code to uase for asp servers ?

Many thanks gain fraser. Will have to get you more than a few beers at the next g2g when back off my travels

Mike

On ASP it's been posted above, here's the full code:

<%
o=request.QueryString("o")

''' default url if no match for o found
url="http://www.myhomepage.com"

select case o
	case "l1"
		url="http://www.google.com"
	case "l2"
		url="http://www.tradedoubler.com"
end select
response.redirect(url)
%>

NB. Edit. Reddy beat me to it!