Google AdWords Announcement

[Rich]

Originally posted by Frostie Also, what about meta-refresh's - there is no mention of any auto-redirecting in the email? Maybe you could have a landing page shown for 1 second that will then refresh via your affiliate link or even 301's??

From the adwords terms: - "Links to your website must allow users to return to the Google search results page or ad network by clicking once on the browser's Back button". So that would probably stop that.

Regarding a very simple landing page with just a banner or a Click Here link, the terms say: - "We require your Destination URL to link to an actual web page with content relevant to your ad". They could use that to try to limit it to pages that don't give anything more than one destination to get to.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few emails from merchants saying "Please stop bidding on this term as we want to advertise on it". In the past they couldn't really stop you for general terms as its an open area and then they would need to overcome your cpc*ctr to get above you, but now they have an excuse to remove your ad and get in for a lower cpc. You could just change your ad's URLs to point to a landing page, but doesn't changing an ad reset it to default CTR? (I'm not that into adwords to know if there is a way to avoid that)

On the same point, you can now remove aff. but would that change cause you to go back to default CTR?

[tomj]

take a life size page dump of a merchant site.....display it as a full page image on ur landing page, link the image to the real site via ur tracking.....no?

[aotagain]

If the displayed ad. is just based on the bid per click then Google probably has two reasons for the change:

The money reason...

Merchants can afford to pay much more per click than affiliates (especially if they put a value on a non-buying visitor). So if more merchants appear, instead of affs, Google's revenue goes up. (Many more merchants are going online with Adwords spend, so the trend would support this).

The 'do no evil' reason...

Many ads. for search terms have large numbers of aff. bidding and they are all going to the same merchant. Although I'm an affiliate, I'm also a searcher and it is very irritating to have to look through all the clutter.


It would be nice if they could actually issue these announcements in some sort of well-defined wording. The Adsense tos changes were impossible to decipher a while back on multiple boxes.

They issue an edict and thousands of people waste a load of time adjusting pages with an unclear idea of whats OK. Google waste time replying to a load of email enquiries (or not, depending on whether you get an automatic reply!).

[Barry]

Yawn.... Just got back up now and I'm gona tackle this over today and tommorrow.

I must admit I have slowly been changing my PPC ads to go to the merchant via my own web portal over the last few months without any major problems.

Sometimes I have found that users even bookmark my site on the way through to the merchants, so it could actually be a bonus for me to be 'forced' to introduce this method accross all my PPC ads.

I think it will def increase the quality of adwords and the leads it produces, as many users treat adwords as a search engine within it own right and start by clicking the top ad, then proceed to go back to google and press the second, then third and so forth. With these new rules it may lead to users being 'less confused' by multiple ads and follow the first ad (as it will be the only one) and stay to make a purchase.

[watcher]

Certainly lots of similar landing pages may well start appearing in the SERPs - however, I think Google is getting a real hold on near-duplicate content so I doubt they will do very well from natural search traffic in the long run.

A view pervades that Google Search, Google Adwords & Google Adsense exist as completely autonomous entities that don't really communicate or operate with any synchronicity.

I strongly feel that exactly the opposite is true.

[Lee_Owen]

I don't exactly know how to put this, but wouldn't a merchant go down the line of taking on board top PPC affiliates and narrowing the competition they create?

For example, a merchant disallows PPC for their program, however they look through their stats, find out who the top PPC were, work with them on delivering PPC as well as doing their own, that way whilst reducing the fight for their own PPC placings, they're actually maximising the service affiliates do for them, reducing costs and maximising target traffic.

They wouldn't employ the top ten, simply concentrate on working with them, perhaps paying bigger bonuses for their time and on the sales they create. It's an option rather than completely denying affiliates or the expense of taking it all inhouse.

The above is for specific merchant site traffic on key words, other affiliates would still be free to bid on other keywords to their own landing pages, they would just be offered an updated list to adhere to. Would that work if it came to denying affiliates or does that already happen?

[watcher]

I think it is economic madness for for merchants to get involved in Adwords bidding wars with their affiliates - I always have thought this - this change really brings home the point.

For me, merchants have two sensible choices - either they withdraw completely from doing their own PPC and leave it to their affiliates to fight it out or they bar their affiliates from doing direct PPC and do it all themselves (or their outsourced agency).

I suppose a really cheeky (or enterprising) agency could pay a big brand merchant say £500,000/PA for the exclusive right to use direct PPC with commission being paid on a CPA basis - merchant monetizes their brand, maintains their sales volume and only pays for successful sales while the agency becomes the sole PPC advertiser of a big brand with the unlimited earnings potential of CPA commission.

Marketing Holy Grail ?

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Networks views are fairly quiet at moment.

As outlined there could be some strains on exisiting affiliate / merchant relationships, those affiliates messed around will have to opportunity to seek good merchants they may have overlooked in the past.

Personally we can only see how it pans out, but i think where there were parties working towards harmony between merchants / affiliates / agencies will be undone in a number of cases. It depends how merchants embrace it to either work closer with affiliates or make knee jerk demands.

If a merchant or agency tells us to stop, and i am not talking about brand named bidding, I will seek an alternative merchant who is more receptive and end up being a competitor. On the plus side it could actually forge some relationships even closer.

[bapages]

Could this lead to more merchants going the way of interflora by banning their name in url's, or even encourage typosquatting?

[k021]

OK, so if it is one advertiser per search term, what happens in this scenario:

Search term: "Brand Name" - merchant + 5 aff advertisers
Search term: "Brand Name Really Specific Product" - only 1 advertiser

If I am the only advertiser for "Brand Name Really Specific Product" will I appear or will I be competing against the other people broad and phrase matching "Brand Name"? ie. are the people broad matching or phrase matching "Brand Name" considered to be bidding on the same search term as "Brand Name Really Specific Product"?

In other words, can you beat competition by simply having wider search term inventory than anyone else?

[guyguy]

If everyone going to have to make their own landing page sites, I can see this having the effect of turning PPC affiliates in to a cross breed of SEO affiliate as well

Following on from that, i think you will start to see a similar range of websites listed in Serps and in the PPC adverts. Once that happens SEO is dead in the water as Google will want us all to pay in order to keep Google profits increasing. Google has to satisfy the shareholders and free listings in SERPS does not meet that criteria.

This is all part of Google's attempt to increase the quality of PPC adverts to match that found in Serps.

As a PPC affiliate i welcome the changes and am looking foreward to new and different opportunities and i am glad the uncertainty is over (for now!) But this affects us all whether SEO, PPC or Adsense, it is just a question of timing.

Sean