D
Wow, looks like an important article. Off to read and maybe blog it.
Thanks David!
Thanks David!
Yikes, that was a powerful read filled with powerful data and theories.
Lots of truth in it too. Disturbing...
Lots of truth in it too. Disturbing...
IMHO, no, they don't hate affiliates as much as they hate affiliate sites which in their opinion don't provide relevance, value, and a good user experience for Google's customers - the searchers.
There is an attitude within Google however that affiliates are unnecessary and that searches would get as much, if not better, value by going direct to the vendors site.
Sadly, in some cases this is all too true. It's up to us affiliate marketers to rise to the challenge and overcome it, just as we do to any other challenge in an ever changing market place.
There is an attitude within Google however that affiliates are unnecessary and that searches would get as much, if not better, value by going direct to the vendors site.
Sadly, in some cases this is all too true. It's up to us affiliate marketers to rise to the challenge and overcome it, just as we do to any other challenge in an ever changing market place.
They called affiliates "Spammers"!
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads: Spammers get paid each time ads are clicked on their webpages. Another term for PPC ads is “sponsored links”.
Thin Affiliates: Spammers make money when a transaction is completed after the user has clicked through to the merchant’s site from their webpages.
And even worse..."Note: Major cosmopolitan cities are preferred targets for spammers, especially hotel affiliates. Such results should be flagged as Spam, even if they are related to the query and helpful to users. For example, a hotel affiliate page with a list of Chicago hotels may be assigned a rating Relevant, but also receive a Spam flag."
They do not see affiliates as necessary, so that means by their own definition it is spam. But they do not seem to mind being a major player in the affiliate game their self.
Are affiliates just too much comp for google? or is there internal conflict between departments? Was it the opinion of just one department or is it the policy of google?
Here is an example of what I am trying to get at.
The google spam team will punish you with the algo for having too many ads on the pages now, many have been hit with two ad units or less, but the google adsense team will encourage you to get 3 full ad blocks on each page.
One department (spam team) wants to stop you so their team looks good and the adsense team wants your pages full of ads so they can increase their revenues for the company.
I believe they are trying to find a balance, but their departments have contradictory goals.
Kinda like our government.
Homeland security wants to "protect" you and the courts want to protect your freedom, and let me tell you, throughout history, "protection and security" has always removed freedom, so one team has to fail for the other to be a success. They may have good intentions, but in the end they "war" against their self from the inside causing untold damages on a large scale, causing an imbalance in the host organization. This is historical fact that larger organizations and governments have always run into, and Google is a mega corporation.
Just my opinion
S
SEO Journalist
Guest
I honestly didn't realize that affilates and affiliate sites were viewed that way. A lot more info here than I was able to turn up any where else.
Thanks for the gold mine.
Thanks for the gold mine.
You didn't? And, based on your user name, you specialize in SEO?
Did you know that - after all the good work done to get a site up to the top of page 1, you can suddenly get hit by a human review?
I hope you've read the guide Google gives to all it's people who do their human rating. If not I suggest you do because to maintain a high rank and enjoy all that 'free' (what a miss-used word that is in this context) traffic has elements that you must take into your On Page SEO mix rather than just the traditional elements of keywords use and placement etc.
