From Great Quality Score to Slap in 3 months

[chrisuk]

Google don't like affiliates and they don't like the following at all.

-price comparision
-ppc affiliates (eg ppc partner sites, esp YSM)
-cpa affiliates with thin ( and not so thin sites )

There are exceptions, brand and size of operation play a role, MoneySupermarket etc is really just a big affiliate site but have a lot of suplimentary content and reach - read useful experience, you can't compete with their presence thats why their ads still run.

Even effective arbitrage sites that have real content running sponsoreds are not getting away with it except for Google bum buddy ASK.com who have no landing page content at all but they have both brand and are a Google search partner (someone with clout should REALLY call the press over that) tut tut TUT! because that is blatant abuse of fair competition and totally invalidates the supposed reasons for Adwords QS.

However its not just tiny weenie affiliates who Google are squashing, for what I think is one of the best reads of the week, have a browse over this little article, its all about a company called Geosign and what happens when you wake up and find Google no longer like you!

You won't like what you read but what it will do is encourage you even more to look away from Adwords as much as possible for income and traffic because whatever variant of aff marketing you use, with just Adwords you are very vunerable.

[MattSweet]

Originally Posted by andrewshipway I wonder if its just retarted graduates who manually review the sites, and get rid of any affiliate sites they find what so ever, because they don't know what they are doing.

I remember a few years back when I worked for PPC agency and some google editorial 'experts' came in to help us write good ads.

They were all Oxbridge grads and they were talking us through writing 70 character ads... They couldn't speak a sentence without adding uneccessary waffle let alone write a good ad. The worrying thing was they all completely bought into the whole google thing. If it's these guys doing editorials on landing sites then there's no hope.

ps - anyone know how to change the r.o.eye text under my user name as I no longer work there? I've looked all through the profile pages...

[jezaff]

google says they dont like comparison sites and some(?) affiliate sites:

The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it's important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.
eBook sites that show frequent ads
'Get rich quick' sites
Comparison shopping sites
Travel aggregators
Affiliates that don't comply with our affiliate guidelines

[tonyr]

There are some really good points being made in this thread.

I think that it is just as risky to switch from doing mainly Google PPC to relying on (mainly) Google SEO. I believe that Yahoo and Live get a fair amount of traffic in the US but get very little in the UK. So Google dominates again.

It can be great to get that "free" search engine traffic but they can switch off the tap at any time. Look at the problems that Ray from Shopcodes is having at the moment with Google search engine traffic.

So you need to diversify your traffic sources to build a sustainable business. As well as SEO and PPC on the 3 main search engines you have: email lists, RSS, links from relevant websites, social networks bookmarks, blog networks, press releases, viral marketing, link bait, creating really great content, offline Marketing (?), all the usual stuff.

The trouble with all of this stuff is that it can be very time consuming and out of your control.

PPC at least is very quick to set up and run and (apart from quality score B.S.)very controllable. You are using money as a tool (in place of time) to make more money. I think that is why big business wants to keep it for themselves and keep the little guy out. With the profits that they make from it, they can afford to pay good writers to churn out content and win at SEO as well.

[Stellar]

I don't quite understand why Google has an issue with comparison sites. Comparison sites defiantly add value to the users by the very nature of what they are doing. They are one of the most useful types of sites around.

The only reason can be that if a user goes to a comparison site, they will find the product /service that they want quickly and easily, rather then searching endlessly in Google, therefore reduce Google's Adwords revenue.

So it is all about dollars and pounds, and nothing about the user experience.

[chrisuk]

Following on from my Geosign post which shows the risks of relying on a single source of traffic, one strategy I am now employing to secure long term traffic is site aquisition in multiple niches. These sites are generally already in Google with traffic and just need doing up.

It is a painfully slow process and expensive but is gradually allowing me to build new organic traffic. The trick is to treat them and further develop them as real sites rather than as SE spam fodder so they last. This is a strategy that might suit some affiliates who have large cash reserves from the good old days but it is a lot of work to scale into hundreds of 'real sites.' But obtaining established sites means you have base traffic from day one, you can for example just stick adsense on them until you get to around to fixing them up.

I have been a 'thin' affiliate in the past, I still have some thin sites but with Adwords at least it seems that even content rich sites are being squeezed and my main worry is that the day comes where you cannot buy the traffic at all so its better to work towards obtaining high volume organic traffic and keep scaling it. In a way you are still paying upfront for traffic but investing in terms of designers, content writers and seo. Then I guess ppc on top of all that wherever you can.

Its not all bad - in the US Yahoo just announced you can ppc direct to merchant so that may come over here. Its Google Adwords that is the problem, too big, too dominant and with an unhealthy influence on income in almost every sector. May their stock fall further!

[andrewshipway]

Exactly. What do you do when you have dominated a search market, and you can't increase revenue any more? Tweak it so you do. Get rid of affiliates, try other ways to increase search queries, which mean more clicks on the google ads.

Getting rid of affiliates could be the first step in the introduction of there own CPA model, which I read about. It makes sense.

Originally Posted by Stellar I don't quite understand why Google has an issue with comparison sites. Comparison sites defiantly add value to the users by the very nature of what they are doing. They are one of the most useful types of sites around. The only reason can be that if a user goes to a comparison site, they will find the product /service that they want quickly and easily, rather then searching endlessly in Google, therefore reduce Google's Adwords revenue. So it is all about dollars and pounds, and nothing about the user experience.

[ian-d]

Lets hope that come 10pm tonight they've resolved the problem and we can all go on our merry way! For now i have used a domant domain i had and copied the data across, that has atleast got me running again!!!

[tonyr]

Well, I'm back up and running with adwords to a new domain.
Most of the keywords have a great quality score with 0.02p minimum bid.

I wonder how long I'll last this time!

[Qui Gon Jinn]

When using adwords, treat your sites as disposable & don't get emotional about them, like seo I guess you never know when you might get hit & are no longer the teachers pet, simply play kiss chase, they hit you by kissing your arse goodbye, you run (copied content over to another domain), they chase, rinse & repeat.

Just because you get spanked once it doesn't necessarily mean your content was bad. make a few modifications & whack up a new one. Maybe "thin" & "narrow"minded, but no reason why you cannot have both running concurrently, why should it be one or the other. Your "fat" site can be your fallback biatch.

[tbp]

Comparison sites defiantly add value to the users by the very nature of what they are doing.

I think Google are losing the plot a bit now, and no longer care about whether sites add value or not.

A lot of good sites have been taken down, and a lot of useless 1 page sites with a small paragraph of text and a couple of links remain. All these do is lengthen the buying process for the searcher, without adding anything usefull.