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Most affiliates do not fit the criteria to get into Froogle. So, Froogle becomes a big retailer only club. I have a feeling that this will be an economic disaster for both companies that rely on affiliates to sell products and for small business sites that sell these products. Some companies that offer affiliate programs have upward of 10,000 affiliates. That's 10,000 small businesses!
What experience does the end user want? I've looked through Froogle. It's pretty cool if you know what you want. If not, it's page after page of mind numbing pictures and prices. It seems users would like to go to a site and peruse the products, descriptions and prices.
I don't know... I hope Google does.
Tha majority of the web's biggest properties participate in affiliate programs including the above mentioned and :
CNET
Infospace
FTD
Cars.com
Msn
Affiliate sites are more likely to spam because less is at stake, but performance based marketing and commission/fee based relationships are thriving more then ever.
If Froogle ever becomes significant, affiliates can just set up their own order page and let the merchant handle the shipping and customer service.
BINGO
1) For the vendor, affiliate programs made it possible to reach targeted audiences without risking advertising dollars on sites that couldn't provide audited circulation figures and demographic research.
2) For the Web publisher, affiliate programs offered a way to earn revenue from their Web content without having to sell and serve ads.
It wasn't too long until a few affiliate managers and entrepreneurs got the idea of "affiliate sites"--i.e., sites that existed solely to drive traffic to vendors through search-optimized pages with boilerplate content and affiliate links. From the vendor's perspective, this could be called a "saturation bombing" strategy--i.e., load up SERPs with hundreds of thousands of nearly identical affiliate pages (many of them generated automatically by computer), all pointing to the vendor's site.
I think the days of such affiliate sites are numbered, because (a) they offer little if any value to the search engines' end users; (b) they make the search engines less useful by cluttering up SERPs; (c) they represent an expense to the search engines; and (d) they compete with the search engines' PPC or PFI listings. It's in the search engines' best interests to weaken the hold of pure affiliate sites on SERPS. This is especially true of a search engine like Google where "search quality" is both a mantra and a unique selling proposition.
However, I don't think that affiliate programs will go away--they'll just return to what they were supposed to be in the first place: an alternative or supplement to CPM and CPC advertising on Web publishers' content sites. (It's worth noting, by the way, that some affiliate programs have continued to focus on content sites even during the "affiliate site" craze. In the travel category, for example, some affiliate programs are merely an extension of the vendors' existing travel-agency distribution. They get referrals from travel-related "content sites" in much the same way that they get referrals from travel agents, and they rely on well-placed text links from their affiliates instead of offering the kind of automated page-generation software used by several of the major booking programs.)
And, there's where we part company, europeforvisitors. I believe that affiliates who offer useful, targeted content will thrive in the future. Success in the affiliate arena today requires a great deal of hard work. There are substantial rewards for those willing to pore out some sweat.
IMO, you can forget about reverting back to nostalgic times when affiliate banners and links were a minor adjunct to information sites. Won't happen. The advent of commission based selling (CPA) took care of that.
mfishy, I think you have it the other way around. I always thought these people paid Google to use Google SERPS, not the other way around.
> It's in the search engines' best interests to weaken the hold of pure affiliate sites on SERPS. This is especially true of a search engine like Google where "search quality" is both a mantra and a unique selling proposition.
europe: I don't know if you've been around since, say 1996 - since 1996 I haven't seen a single engine survive after they bought a fight with the commercial Web...this communist rhetoric that the web should be 100% content and the affiliates are evil and Google is God has me on my nerves. This ain't Russia in 1980 alright?
Affiliates are specialists that engines can't have onboard because it'd become too expensive, so they outsource this work.
The minute Google REALLY threatens affiliates is the end for Google. So far it's all been speculation so affiliates are quietly watching. Any of you have any ideas what kind of money affiliates move? Probably many times Google's revenues, I know people making 100k per month, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Microsoft, watch these people knock Google out if Google ever threatens the affiliate business.
Google has been successful so far because they're good at search, watch them step on Microsoft's toe with this new approach they're taking with B2C and you'll see google squashed like dry fruit on the road by the BIG players.
Mhes:
I disagree with your assessment that Google would lose market share once it dumped commercial sites. Google's transition to an "information only" index would only occur if and when Froogle takes off. What we see of Froogle now is only it's baby steps. If google is serious about Froogle they will listen to the feedback generated here, and in other area's, and simply incorporate the best idea's. Google may even gain market share by simply adding Froogle to the already existing toolbar, that is if Froogle is cool enough and delivers what shoppers want.
If, in fact, the top search's conducted on Google are commerce based, why go through the considerable time and expense to develop Froogle?
ciml:
I disagree with you for all the reasons listed above.
Also, I agree that people will complain about the competition. They will have to participate in Google and Froogle. This could play well to a Google dual index strategy.
I don't believe any webmaster has to work against Google. In fact the best, and longest lasting, results are achieved by following Google's guidelines.
JimBobMcCalister:
I too see something on the horizen. Unfortunately it's too far away to determine what it is or what it means. Best to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Psoares:
Interesting perspective.
I've been in conversations where the drift is to knock affiliate sites, only to find out later that the critics are doing it too. Its sort of like coming out of the closet. Lots of dirty little secrets. They just don't want their colleagues to think they've gone over to the "dark" side, but are happy to cash their checks.
Once you decide to come down from your ivory tower, you're tempted to follow the money.
Great idea!
Update variables that can change daily such as product descriptions, sizes and prices? Add new items and delete old and those out of stock? Do that with thousands of different products over dozens of different merchants? Get your merchant to provide you with daily datafeeds to facilitate this?
I hardly see anything in the way of auto generated affiliate pages any more. Again, that's an old stereotype about affiliate sites.
It may be a stereotype, but it's still true in some categories like hotel bookings. (A friend of mine told me just the other day that she planned to generate some 1,500 hotel-booking pages through a major lodging vendor's affiliate program.)
I believe that affiliates who offer useful, targeted content will thrive in the future.
So do I. On several occasions, I've used the example of my own search for information on broadband routers after I got a cable modem. The best information I found was on a site where very helpful articles and product reviews were accompanied by affiliate links. Google took me to those information or content pages, and the information pages sent me to the affiliate vendor's site. Even if affiliate catalog or order pages disappeared from the Google index tomorrow, affiliate-written information pages like the ones I visited would still be in the Google index...and they'd still be generating referrals and commissions for the affiliates.
IMO, you can forget about reverting back to nostalgic times when affiliate banners and links were a minor adjunct to information sites.
Those times aren't over. The vast majority of affiliates at places like Commission Junction and Amazon.com are hobbyists who consider themselves lucky if they cover their hosting expenses with affiliate banners and links.
But don't assume that information sites (a.k.a. "content sites") can't make good money with affiliate programs. For an information site, the keys to success with affiliate sales are much like the requirements for success in special-interest magazine publishing:
1) The right topic.
2) Editorial quality (and quantity) that will attract readers.
3) Advertisers (in this case, affiliate programs) that meet the needs of readers.
4) Good placement of well-crafted affiliate links.
5) Enough circulation, in the form of unique visitors, to build a critical mass of prospects for goods and services that are advertised on the site.
IMHO, it's hard to publish a profitable editorial site, just as it's hard to publish a profitable magazine. But it can be done. (It it couldn't, I wouldn't be running a mom-and-pop editorial site as my full-time job.)
europe: I don't know if you've been around since, say 1996 - since 1996 I haven't seen a single engine survive after they bought a fight with the commercial Web...this communist rhetoric that the web should be 100% content and the affiliates are evil and Google is God has me on my nerves. This ain't Russia in 1980 alright?
"Communist rhetoric"?
"Affiliates are evil"?
"Google is God"?
"Russia in 1980"?
It's a good thing this forum doesn't have a hyperbole filter--life here would be duller if it did. :-)
No, Google pays sitesz to display their ads.
Why would AOL drop Overture (20 million+ per quarter) to pay Google? Google pays AOL bexause it's users click on their ads- the same go for their other affiliates.
You are extremely confused.
So, I gather that nobody believes that affiliates are in trouble. Froogle or no, life simply continues as it has?
Let me summerize: Some here believe that affiliates have strength in numbers, others that affiliates will survive in some form or another, and others see certain aspects of the affiliate game changing. Is that it?
Froogle means nothing? Google has no intention of creating an information index, and a commerce index? Even if Froogle is a success, Google will keep commerce sites in the Google index?
OK, what do you think Google's intent is?
Froogle is not the first shopping engine on the block, others have failed...maybe they (google) can slap a logo on something and it succeeds, time will tell, it's certainly not a given conclusion at this point. Most affiliates are probably still sleeping well at night.
>Why would AOL drop Overture (20 million+ per quarter) to pay Google? Google pays AOL bexause it's users click on their ads- the same go for their other affiliates.
>You are extremely confused.
Google doesn't "pay" sites to display their ads. Sites PAY Google for a search data feed and this price is discounted when a Google ad is clicked on that site.
I make about a Jaguar per month in this business I'm indeed *extremely confused* as to what to do with all this money.
[edited by: NFFC at 2:01 pm (utc) on Dec. 26, 2002]
[edit reason] As per TOS [/edit]
I happen to have been seeing a very nice, growing income stream from affiliate marketing over the last year. If your experience has been anything like mine, it hasn't been at all easy.
Its taken a great deal of hard work, patience, experimentation, accumulation of knowledge and some luck. I've reached the point where merchants seek me out and where I can negotiate better payouts.
I think another stereotype is that affiliates who succeed have somehow subverted the system, that in some inexplicable way those banner farms and cookie cutter pages by some fluke paid off. I can say, in my case, that I scrupulously play by the rules. No tricks, no cookie cutters, straight HTML. I avoid what Google says not to do, and do what it says to do.
Do I optimize? You bet. I apply everything I've learned on WebmasterWorld and other boards, especially WebmasterWorld. I hardly do any PPC. Legitamate, acceptable SEO practices have brought whatever success I've enjoyed. And that's my dirty little secret.
Child's play. Yes, the travel industry is subject/vulnerable to auto-generated fodder. There are those here that could generate 5k travel guide pages on each of several separate domains in the time I've taken to write this. I expect Froogle will be hit with this, too --perhaps even more so. Armed with the Excel catalog disks many manufacturers readily supply to their distributors, it is relatively easy to build a 1500-page (static) online catalog in a day or two, most of the time being used to ftp the product photos. Luckily (depending on your perspective), good SEO doesn't scale very well.
>Let me summerize: Some here believe that affiliates have strength in numbers, others that affiliates will survive in some form or another, and others see certain aspects of the affiliate game changing. Is that it?
Rather than "strength in numbers," I'd say that affiliates have strength in their ability to sell. The point that is made over and over is that commissioned-based sales is known to be cost-effective to merchants (well before the internet came around) and there is a belief that they -the merchants- will propel the aff industry through custom offerings, better commissions, better customer tracking, etc.
>Froogle means nothing? Google has no intention of creating an information index, and a commerce index?
It's really too soon to judge Froogle, IMO. I suspect, just as it has evolved in the current state of online search, that the small, home-grown, mom & pop website will find it difficult to compete there on even moderately competitive terms.
So, I gather that nobody believes that affiliates are in trouble. Froogle or no, life simply continues as it has?
I believe that a lot of affiliates are in trouble--or will be soon. But I don't think affiliate programs will go away.
My prediction:
Pure affiliate sites are destined for extinction. (Example: The typical hotel booking site that consists of 1,000 boilerplate hotel pages and a handful of boilerplate "destination guide" pages).
Editorial "content sites" that use affiliate links the way they were intended (as a form of advertising) will continue to prosper with affiliate programs if they have the right topics, choose appropriate affiliate programs, and use affiliate links effectively. (Example: A site for bird fanciers that has affiliate links for vendors of bird supplies, "I love my Cockatiel" bumper stickers and clothing, canary Christmas ornaments, veterinary guides for bird owners, and so on.)
Affiliate sites that evolve into information sites with affiliate links will still have the ability to prosper if they offer useful content to the reader. (Example: A site offering DVD movies that morphs into a review site where the content would be indexed in Google even if nothing were being sold.)
If Froogle can pick out product pages from the main index, it shouldn't be that hard for Google to determine what's an information page and what's an e-commerce page. If e-commerce pages are then given less weight in the algorithm used for the main Google index, those pages will generate revenues from Google's users only if they're linked from information pages (i.e., editorial or advertorial pages) that have the potential to rank high in the Google index.
Side note: By "e-commerce pages," I mean product pages with shopping carts, datasheet-style hotel pages that link to booking engines, etc. I don't expect Google to differentiate between pure editorial pages and commercial information pages: i.e., an article about Windows at PC Magazine (editorial) or a sell page for Windows at Microsoft.com (commercial information).
My question is, where was it ever decreed that the use of affiliate links should be limited to the way you describe? What authority was it that set such limitations?
Lets assume an ideal internet, as some would conceive it, completely free from any affiliate links/sites/pages, etc. In that ideal world, the only concern of the search engine, IMO, should be to provide visitors with relevant SERPs. Merchants who couldn't cut the mustard in that environment would find their businesses languishing unless they had a large budget for advertising and branding.
Now, lets introduce to the web merchants who aren't operating with huge promotional budgets and who get the bright idea, instead, of having a bunch of sales agents out there also promoting their products or services on the web. After all, that's the way business has traditionally been done outside the internet. We'll call them affiliates.
I ask, why should this alter in any respect the principal that relevence should be the only concern of the search engines as long as the site owner (information provider, merchant or affiliate) is in compliance with the SEs TOS and generally accepted practices? What business is it of the SE to dictate how a merchant ought to conduct its business, and, how would doing so as you would have it, benefit users, the SEs and merchants?
Europe - I'm a little curious about your comments about reverting to use of affiliate links "the way they were intended". You go on to describe in some detail what this is supposed to mean.
My question is, where was it ever decreed that the use of affiliate links should be limited to the way you describe? What authority was it that set such limitations?
You're confusing what I said with what you think I said. :-)
Nobody ever decreed that affiliate links should be used only as advertising. And, as far as I know, nobody is trying to set any such limitations. I know I'm not.
But I don't think anyone would seriously dispute that the original concept behind affiliate programs was to use affiliate banners, buttons, text links, etc. as a type of advertising. (Indeed, one of the major affiliate networks--Commission Junction--still uses the terms "advertiser" and "publisher" even though many of today's CJ affiliates are online retailers, not online publishers.)
By the way, there's an interesting history of affiliate programs' origins at:
[geocities.com...]
I ask, why should this alter in any respect the principal that relevence should be the only concern of the search engines as long as the site owner (information provider, merchant or affiliate) is in compliance with the SEs TOS and generally accepted practices? What business is it of the SE to dictate how a merchant ought to conduct its business, and, how would doing so as you would have it, benefit users, the SEs and merchants?
There you go again--suggesting that I'm advocating something when I'm merely commenting on the topic of this thread.
It's up to Google and other SEs to calculate degrees of relevancy. But remember, Google's stated mission is to provide users with the most relevant information, so it wouldn't be at all surprising if Google chose to give more weight to "information pages" than to "order pages." To use a hypothetical example, it might give more weight to an Adobe.com page describing PageMaker than to an Adobe.com order page for PageMaker, on the premise that the user looking for information on PageMaker is more interested in reading about PageMaker than he is in filling in an order form or clicking on a shopping cart. That doesn't mean the order page would be excluded from the index; it simply means that the order page probably wouldn't rank as high as Adobe's PageMaker information page, a PC Magazine review of PageMaker, or a DTP maven's article on how to use PageMaker--all of which would be more relevant than the PageMaker order page if Google's mission was to help users find relevant information.
Suffice it to say that affiliate marketing has moved far beyond mere incidental advertising, and will continue to evolve as merchants become more creative and supportive of this business model. The latter is my prediction.
Suffice it to say that affiliate marketing has moved far beyond mere incidental advertising, and will continue to evolve as merchants become more creative and supportive of this business model...
One comment: Endemic advertising on special-interest Web sites is more than "incidental"--especially when it's controlled by the publisher, as affiliate advertising is. Targeted affiliate advertising has more in common with direct marketing than it does with, say, an Orbitz popup on the Washingtonpost.com home page or an Internet casino popunder on an About.com travel site--both of which definitely are "mere incidental advertising."
I would like to shift focus back to my original purpose for creating this thread.
With the advent of Froogle, Google now has a commerce only SE. With a few tweaks, and Google's good name, Froogle could take off and become huge. Google's index could then be filled with pure information sites, and commerce sites could be booted out and told to apply to Froogle.
Why would Google do this?
1. The index is broken up and updates could be performed on a new and less hectic schedule. No more "dance" on the information side, and possibly continous updates on the Froogle side.
2. Google delivers exactly what web searchers want. If you want information and don't care to see three pages of sales sites, search Google. If you are looking to buy something and want to see products right away, search Froogle.
3. Google would have two SE's to use in bringing in income.
4. This creates a new product for Google and gives Google some diversity.
Now, the question I'm asking isn't about milled pages or banner/link sites vs. information sites with affiliate links.
If affiliates aren't welcome in Froogle, where do affiliates get their traffic? who picks this up?. Yahoo/Ink?
Can affiliates survive without the traffic Google creates?
If affiliates aren't welcome in Froogle, where do affiliates get their traffic?
They'll get their traffic from Google, just as they do now, if they publish pages that qualify as "relevant" according to Google's algorithm.
They may not get as much traffic as they did before Froogle hit the scene, but that doesn't mean they'll be toast.
1 - Create a site for a very specific product.
2 - Add hidden layers and tons of hidden links such as a long menu, but entirely hidden within a invisible DIV - may be ActiveX too, just use all the UGLY hidden text tricks you've learned.
3 - Show different content for all browsers, including code that locks up Netscape 4.0 - EXACTLY the way Google TELLS YOU NOT TO. Cloake the world at will, no kidding, serve bogus messages to Netscape users behind the scenes in HTML comments, do as you wish and as Google most hates it.
4 - Massively, and I do mean *massively*, crosslink with all your other products and brands and marketing sites, add links within hidden content such as ActiveX.
Ugly huh. Google will ban it in no time. Yidaki will probably go report this site the moment he sees it. Right?
Answer: Depends on depth of your pocket. Yes.
On Google - the rich stay, the small go.
Why?
It all depends if YOU are making money FROM Google! Yup, they're a proud bunch and making money from their SERPs is UGLY (because you should be buying adwords, duh).
If you can prove your site does not depend on Google for income they'll leave it there, even with all the above tricks.
I have proof - www.microsoft.com = Hidden layers, ActiveX, hidden links, massive crosslinking, popups, MASSIVE cloaking, feeding Netscape bad content(such as open tables, no </table> tag makes them invisible in older netscape), and on and on and on.
Google's plan for the future boils down to the way MSN does things today, except Google is hiding behind a bunch of hipocrit babytalk - Google is out there to take over information retrieval on the Web, they ain't playing, and they'll take no hostages.
I'd prefer an open approach - just charge money for the listings if commercial sites are your problem. What you can't deny is Google is simply hunting down commercial sites that are not willing to buy adwords and that make money from the SERPs.
What europeforvisitors and others here are talking about "content" and "informative" affilaites is just superficial - the real issue is the money behind adwords.
If Google is so darned nice why don't they take down adwords - they're not in it for the money and they want to help the world retrieve information in better ways. Right?
froogle may take away some traffic - hence revenues from affiliate sites, so what?
an intelligent man who sold drill machines and drills once said: our customers do not want to buy drills - they want to buy the solution: holes in their walls....
this guy wanted to say: if there is anything else we can produce in the future that makes good holes in a wall (e.g. a laser) we will change our products - instead of sticking to our old drills - we don't sell a product but a solution.
now think of the internet: affiliate marketing today is the drill - maybe in some years it is gone maybe not.
but there is one principle that won't change for a very long time: getting traffic to your site and turning it into money. affiliate marketing is just one example...
if affiliate marketing dies with froogle - why e.g. not become your own merchant? what is actually a merchant? :)
let's assume you are running your own shop on the web but the logistics and the billing are outsourced. are you an affiliate of someone or are you a merchant? is google going to hire an army of private investigators and accountants to find out how exactly your business works...? :) I don't think so.
I think it is mostly a reaction to Froogle which adds to the overall impression that Google is not over keen on the affilate business model.
A quick over-simplifacation:
Google uses DMOZ for its directory, DMOZ says no to affilates.
Froogle will not accept a direct feed from affilates.
Adwords will make advertisers clearly state if they are affilates.
Taking the above into consideration I would hazard a guess that they are not to keen on affilates appearing in the regular search either.
The question affilate webmasters should be asking is what steps *will* Google take to remove the presence of affilates from the regular search.
I personally think we saw some evidence earlier in the year, "over optimised" sites saw rankings drop and many in the travel keywords noticed this. All imho.
