Part II: Google Adwords hate Affiliates?

June 11, 2007

This is the continuation of Part I: Google Adwords hate Affiliates? These are some discussions going on about this issue (Some interesting ones):

DTM PPC is available, as always. And most merchants allow their affiliates to do it, few (<25%) disallow it. And of those that do disallow it per public policy, many of them will make exceptions if you communicate properly with them and are determined to add value to their efforts (and not just trounce on their domain name and trademarks).

Cloaking your aff urls is also a fallacy - you can’t (and shouldn’t) hide the truth. Referring someone to a place to buy is not a problem in itself, neither is tracking it or getting paid for it. There are reasons to do server side redirets (like deep linking from a database / datafeed to target product pages), and none of those reasons have to do with secrecy. It’s not hard to detect the final redirect url contained in cloaked or redirected urls.

I am sure it’s frustrating being tagged, I would feel exactly the same way. But there are tons of people, including affiliates, who are not getting whacked at all. So dispel with the G hates Affs, links must be cloaked, they don’t want our biz stuff - it does nothing positive for anyone. If it were true, all affiliates would be flicked off everywhere for every keyword. As an affiliate who does both DTM PPC and PPC to my own affiliate websites, I can attest that this is not the case. So either I’m some sort of freakish exception (I have many aff sites and several adwords accounts and several dtm ppc projects and several merchants i run ppc for as a consultant, some using aff links for my compensation - so i’m sybil the 16 headed exception) or the blanket they-hate-affs answers (guesses) are incorrect.

We got whacked and we don’t have any affiliate links.

So it means that not only affiliate marketers are hitted. It seems that Google is changing their algorithm for Google adwords and that is normal!

Geez, I thought *that* stopped working about a year ago…

Didn’t Google already make changes that eliminated most affiliate landing pages?

In any case, what is it that you offer on your site that isn’t provided at the merchant itself? I don’t see any added value from what you have described.

Surely you don’t consider the adsense boxes and “other 3 products” to be “added value”?

As a consumer, I want to see them improve quality further, but don’t have much hope.

That’s true and it seems that Google is stopping them not at once but with groups and slowly. Also remember google is earning money with them no? Again is all about business.

If you are a merchant that got hit, just send adwords support an email. They will have you fixed up in no time.

It was a fact a year and a half ago that affiliates were being disinvited to the game. If you still have sites standing and you are an affiliate, it is just a matter of time.

There is evidence of hand reviewing so even if you are masking your URLs, they will find you.

oogle is an affiliate.

They also encourage people to be an affiliate for Google products.

I don’t think it’s an anti affiliate thing as such just a simple message. If you sell a product or service use adwords, if not use SEO. Simple take heed and act. This promotes quality in the SERPs and relevance in adwords results. Kind of what they’ve always said, so consistent in a painful kind of way.

We have a very high quality information publishing site. The business model is mainly adsense and affiliates with some JVs. The adwords ads we’ve used are highly relevant, go to the right page, very good CTRs. You’d struggle to find low quality or low relevance anywhere.

Only conclusion is that it’s a business model issue and if you have a business model similar to the one I’ve just described then it doesn%