Google AdWords Announcement

[Lee_Owen]

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Affiliate Policy Change
Hello from the Google AdWords Team:

In January 2005, Google will incorporate a new affiliate advertising policy that is designed to provide a better user and advertiser experience.


What is changing:

With this new affiliate policy, we will only display one ad per search query for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL. This way, users will have a more diverse sampling of advertisements to choose from. As always, your ad will be displayed based on its Ad Rank for given searches.

For instance, if a user searches for books on Google.co.uk or anywhere on the Google search and content networks, Google will take an inventory of ads running for the keyword books. If we find that two or more ads compete under the same URL, we will display the ad with the highest Ad Rank.

How this will affect you:

If you are an affiliate, this means that you no longer need to identify yourself as an affiliate in your ad text. However, your current ad text will continue to display your affiliate status until you change it.

Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by this change. Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site.

What you should do:

We recommend that you continue to monitor your ads' performance and optimise your ads as needed to ensure that they are bringing you the best results. Please visit our Optimisation Tips page for more information.

We look forward to continue providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team


Disclaimer: As a business Google must make decisions regarding the advertising we accept. As stated in our Terms and Conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when reviewing AdWords ads created within the program. This only concerns our advertising and in no way affects the search results we deliver. Google offers broad access to content across the web without censoring results.

[Lee_Owen]

I think it's a refeshing change, you're now battling on two fronts, if you're selling the same URL you're battling to be the highest, the loser loses and doesn't have to pay and the second battle is with actual competitors, again raising the stakes in the next battle, with people with that URL losing out but not paying, providing choice for the searcher and creativity for the advertiser.

It would seem however that even though google know about the affiliate market they're not quite up to speed with detailing whether a landing page destination constitutes a domain name or a URL i.e. domainname.com/ versus domainname.com/product. From the above it's pretty much cancelled out all affiliate direct links overnight hasn't it? unless you're top of the pile for that keyword.

Those with webpages are going to directly benefit whilst others get their act together but most of the pros have probably made their webpages already. It'll certainly be an intresting few weeks, some high earnings and high traffic for those ready for the change until it settles down. No doubt some high PPC spend as well for those with the budgets equalling better results??

Me, I only play around because I find it fun, but I know to the serious ones on here it's a huge leap.

[Barry]

Hi
just up late again and had the same mail. Looks like the speculation was true. Def gona have an impact on me - I'm gona worry about it in the morning I think........too tired now.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Notice how they call it "Affiliate Policy Change"

eeewww....affiliate is such a dirty word liked to bottom feeders or pond spawn.

Interesting times ahead...now where's that classified section?

[AffManagement]

I,ve just recd this also, will be a big shift for ppc'ers out there, I do wonder how this will affect the need for additional URL's, could this mean a small increase in domain enquiries? and domain registrations to cover the unique URL criteria Google have set? as I assume thats the option to go with unless you are the top bidder from an affiliate pov.

Have our domain portfolios just gone up a little

Neil

[bapages]

Reading the e-mail I would assume that a decent landing page is all that the PPC would need as well. The other question is would this encourage the use of competitors appearing on brand names, as at the moment they appear to be kept out by the flood of affiliates to their scheme.

[drivetowin]

Is it because its early and / or I'm being thick but as I understand it this means:

If I display the url for example www.comet.com in my google adword, then unless I'm the highest ranking ad apart from Comet themselves my ad will not be shown

but - if I create a webpage at www.xxx.com/comet.php and point to that then even if all that page says is 'click here to visit comet' with an affiliate link to comet then that is ok

or is there more to this change than that?

[bapages]

That is exactly my thoughts on how it reads.

[ianm]

Looks like that to me.

Similar to what Overture did when they banned direct to merchant advertising for affiliates. As Keith says all you need is a splash page with a link to the merchant's site.

My experience with Overture has been that going via a splash page is that if it's done well, then it only has a small effect on the actual click through rate to the merchant's site

[sticky]

thats how I am reading myself, but dont they review these ads so it could be possible (hopefully not) that they could then not allow that ad.

Another thing, if you are deep-linking to a merchants site and someone else is as well and they are deep linking to the same merchant then it would be hard to dislodge them from the top of the pack as your ad wont be shown, you would need to then direct it to another merchant or your own site to get its click through rate up? (i think!)

[spatny]

Hi,

The way I understand it is - only the highest bid on any common landing page will be shown. So if there are 2 amazon affiliates bidding on a keyword, the highest bidder will be shown.

So if you are a typical amazon, ebay direct affiliate, you will have to be the highest bidder on a keyword. This may mean bidding higher than a merchant.

If you land on your own domain, this will not apply to you. However you can't put a merchant's landing page wthin a frame on your own domain.

Google will be paying close attention to the landing page and displayed url in the advert.

I think thats correct.... maybe I am wrong

Spatny

[DanielCoe]

Hi,

If we find that two or more ads compete under the same URL, we will display the ad with the highest Ad Rank.

Is this the displayed URL or the actual link URL?

As if it's the link url surely you could differentiate the url by adding a unique tracking link (e.g. epi= sid= etc.)

Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site.

So if you have a url displayed "www.mymerchant.co.uk/test" and then go to "www.mysite.co.uk/mymerchant" - it won't allow it, is this correct?

Also how will you know if your ads are not being shown and you are actually not on the top spot, other than querying google yourself?

Daniel

[Fraser]

Is there a specific date for this being implemented?

[AffManagement]

Essentially from my understanding unless you have the best ad rank which is determined by a combination of your ad's maximum cost-per-click (price) and clickthrough rate (performance) you will need a unique URL www.uniquedomainname.co.uk with a simple landing page showing with your affiliate link displaying to continue to be listed.

So more domain names and splash/doorway pages

Neil

[ianm]

All an affiliate needs is one domain and a separate landing page for each of their campaigns.

so blue widgets goes to www.mydomain.co.uk/ppc/blue-widgets.html and red widgets goes to www.mydomain.co.uk/ppc/red-widgets.html the two pages can then be simple pages with a banner or link to the merchant. As long as you don't do any form of auto-redirecting then you're OK.