Amazon disallowing Paid Search Clicks

How technically is this done, lose legitimate sales?

[bumpski]

After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. As of May 1, 2009, these paid search Associates will not be paid referral fees.

Amazon will no longer accept clicks coming in through paid search efforts
How technically are the achieving this?

My concern is they will use the browser's "referrer string" to check if the click came from an Affilliate's website(s). But other legitimate sales will be lost if this strategy is used by Amazon.

None of the FAQs I've seen to date address the technical issues.

Also Amazon confused their entire affiliate base this morning with an email suggesting many who claim they are not doing Paid Search programs, ARE doing this type of program.
This is even a clue Amazon might be looking at the referrer string and of course they won't see one from any browser with security software addons.

I personally believe that perhaps 20% of my sales originate from situations that no referrer string will be passed to Amazon.

Any thoughts on how Amazon will do this?

[jskrewson]

Bbumpski, I have the exact same worries. What I took away from the "You use paid search" e-mail that we received this morning is that they don't know how to correctly identify paid search. It is very alarming.

[bumpski]

You know, I guess that's why we should all (nicely) write them about the email being incorrect.

Here's what I wrote, if you copy it (please do!) you should probably drop the last sentence.

Dear Amazon

I'm very concerned I may lose legitimate sales upon implementation of the Paid Search restriction. I do not, and have not, participated in any paid search programs involving Amazon, yet Amazon has now incorrectly identified me as a Paid Search participant.

What this indicates to me is that the technology being used to detect clicks from Paid Search efforts is FAULTY and therefore will impact legitimate clicks and sales which I have referred.

Can you please be specific about what technology will be used to actively detect Paid Search efforts. If the answer involves the web browsers "referrer string", I have grave concerns about loss of legitimate sales.

Thanks for your time,
.....

[LifeinAsia]

I also got some nasti-grams this morning accusing me of violating the new policy. As I have NEVER used paid advertising to send traffic to Amazon, I wrote back a message similar to bumpski's demanding to see the logs of the "proof" they have that I am doing that.

I new suspect the message may have inadvertently been sent to ALL Amazon affiliates. Any affiliates who did NOT receive the message?

[bumpski]

On the Amazon discussion boards there were probably two postings to date mentioning they had not received the email. So there are a few, but maybe the email hasn't propagated everywhere yet either.

If Amazon is using the "referrer string" I would expect a very large number of "false positives" on their Paid Search "detector". Could explain the many incorrect emails versus the few who didn't receive the email.

[wrgvt]

I use paid search directly to amazon and I didn't get the e-mail.

[IanCP]

Heh! heh!

This get more and more hilarious. Yet once again Amazon screws up.

They'll eventually fix it up but, you have to wonder just what flaws exist in their tracking systems.

That's the genuine cause for concern for everyone!

[purplecape]

Since the new policy doesn't go into effect until May 1, isn't it at least possible that they haven't used whatever system they've created to detect uses of direct PPC links? And that the email was just sent out by accident?

[LifeinAsia]

Just got a response back from my message to Amazon. Can't quote the message here, but they basically said it was a reminder message about the new policy and apologized if we received the message despite not engaging in the soon-to-be banned process of keyword bidding and sending directly to Amazon.

So it appears it was a blanket message sent to most, if not all, affiliates.

[bumpski]

Hmmm, I never got a response to my message. The answer you received sounds exactly like the post on the Amazon discussion board.

You think they would have at least resent this "note" to all who received the first "aggressive" email.

[IanCP]

all who received the first "aggressive" email

Bumpski, I didn't resent the email at all, I just put it down to the usual classic miscommunication from the Amazon we have all grown to know and love over the last ten or so years.

Simply put: "I don't ever expect any better!". If there are two ways of doing things, the right way and the wrong way then you can bet your bottom dollar which way Amazon staff will adopt.

Lately I think AdSense have also been going to that very same Amazon University.