Can affiliate marketing survive Google's emphasis on brands?

[superclown2]

I am watching sites that actually sell products or services still rising in the SERPs above affiliate sites for the top key phrases, even though some of the affiliates have vastly more informative sites. I find it interesting that sites that sell widgets can also rank highly for square widgets, which is a highly specialised product, even when they do not sell square widgets themselves but act, in this case, as affiliates and have only a single page of thin content devoted to this product which can outrank large affiliate sites packed with information. Can anyone think of a way around this? Or do we have to become widget sellers ourselves?

If we don't find an answer I fear that pure affiliates may eventually disappear, squeezed out by a brand obsessed Google.

[goodroi]

Affiliate marketing survived Google's Florida update and the many, many other updates that have been regularly happening for over 10 years. I have no doubt that affiliate marketing will continue to adapt, evolve and survive.

Some of the biggest affiliates have turned themselves into brands. Think about the popular product review sites. Those sites do not manufacture products they simply convert their visitors into affiliate commissions by using valuable content on their site. Sounds like a good affiliate business plan to me.

As for "pure affiliates" I do not think I know any "pure affiliates". It has nothing to do Google. It is because my affiliate friends and I quickly realized it was smart to add multiple revenue streams to a website. Why not make money from adsense, affiliate offers and other ways using the same site? It rarely makes sense to limit your revenue opportunity by only doing affiliate marketing.

I think a better question is how can affiliate marketing protect themselves from manufacturers who may want to sell direct to the consumer in the future. What are you doing to make your website more helpful to users and thus more in demand than going direct to the manufacturer?

[Simsi]

Surely the bottom line is how useful the content is to users. I am sure some of the price aggregators I use are affliates and they provide a service that the manufacturers can't - or won't. As do reviews sites and other comparison models.

I believe there is plenty of room for affiliates as long as they have a USP of some sort. But those who regurgitate the same old same old might need to be wary.

[LifeinAsia]

If by "affiliate" you mean someone whose site's only purpose is to promote the products of one or more specific affiliate programs, then they are going to have more and more trouble competing unless they provide some sort of added value to the customer. As a consumer, this makes perfect sense to me- if I am looking to buy a red widget, I want a search on Google to direct me to where I can buy it for the best price. I don't want to be directed to an affiliate site that spends a page and half telling me why I should buy a red widget (I already know why I should buy a red widget- that's what I'm trying to do!) then making me click a link to go to the actual site to buy.

If by "affiliate" you mean someone whose site focuses on a specific niche and uses relevant affiliate programs to generate revenue for the site, then I think it will continue to do well. It may not rank as highly as before for "red widgets," but should still do well for their niche (widget collectors). As a consumer, I visit the widget collectors site very often because I love everything about widgets. I see an article about updating my red widgets with blue doodads, which sounds really cool, and the site happens to have an affiliate relationship with a company that sells blue doodads. I am more than happy to click on the link/banner and check out that site before/instead of going to Google and starting a brand new search for blue doodads.

One key issue here is that the first "affiliate" is basically a brandless OEM site that has to rely on Google traffic to survive- a drop in Google traffic could mean death. The second "affiliate" site has created its own brand that thrives on repeat visitors- a drop in Google traffic may mean less traffic, but the site hopefully has sufficient repeat traffic and has generated good IBLs to maintain sufficient traffic/revenue.

THAT is the key to the future: build a brand, not a generic OEM site.

[wheel]

If you want to see how an affiliate builds brand, sugarrae posted on her blog a while back about how she did some blackberry stuff - and it started by building a brand.

[suggy]

Bottom line:

If by AFFILIATE you mean one who elbows their way up the SERPs by any means (fair or foul) simply to get one click ahead (of the real meat) and then drop as many tracking cookies as possible... well, Google hates you, web users hate you, heck even your merchants hate you (though they're too scared to say it). Your site is pollution, noise, a nuisance, an obstacle and the overwhelming majority of people would cheer if a great big Panda booted your site out of google's index forever.

If, on the other hand, by Affiliate you mean a website that provides some useful service to web-users that it gets rewarded for by virtue of receiving commission on subsequent sales. Or, a website that produces some genuinely worthy (and liked) editorial that is monetized with affiliate ads, then you'll likely still exist post-panda.

Please do not confuse the latter with producing lots of "useful content" (yeah, right!) -- not when, in your heart of hearts, you know you're writing for Google, not visitors!

[walkman]

Write 500 words of a 'review' and hope to sell a product? No, unless you have a perfect name (maybe)

Provide a good service and people click on links? Yes, IMO unless Google decides to grab that share too.

[superclown2]

If by AFFILIATE you mean one who elbows their way up the SERPs by any means (fair or foul) simply to get one click ahead (of the real meat) and then drop as many tracking cookies as possible... well, Google hates you

They haven't hated us for the last ten years so why now?

web users hate you

Do they? More than 'brands' which are only affiliates themselves, who give only a tiny fraction of the information that a good affiliate site provides?

heck even your merchants hate you (though they're too scared to say it)

Having been in this business for nearly 12 vears I think I'm qualified to point out that a lot of the merchants I deal with are seriously worried about the business they are losing because the affiliates that put them there in the first place (because they had better technical and marketing skills) are now being pushed out by thin 'brand' sites that give the consumer so little real meat that they devalue the product.

It does you little credit to sneer at affiliates. We are the ones that built online marketing in the first place, before Google was even dreamed of.

[suggy]

superclown2

I have been an affiliate since 2003. I started out as an affiliate. I also own a commerce site. I didn't sneer at affiliates, I was taking a pop at those affiliates who see their main job as getting ahead of the merchants in 'buy' searches (ie one click ahead). Which, incidentally, is exactly what I used to do, if I am honest with myself. Can you be honest with yourself?

If you are that kind of affiliate, then really you're in the business of extortion.

I outlined what I believe to be useful affiliates (read the whole post!). And, having read Sugarae's post (suggested elsewhere in this thread) on not being a #*$!ty affiliate, that chimes with my opinion.

The reality is that many, many affiliate sites are unwelcome intrusions, an extra click with no value, noise, pollution, an "on what's this #*$!?!" at the end of a search result. I am not saying that's you, but we've all seen plenty of that, haven't we?

[superclown2]

If you are that kind of affiliate, then really you're in the business of extortion.

I really don't know which school of affiliate marketing you attended but here in the UK merchants have a choice of whether to deal with us or not. They are not children and I'm quite sure that the guys I deal with would soon show us the way home if we tried to 'extort' anything from them.

They deal with us for one good reason. UK Affiliates produced about six billion pounds worth of business in the UK last year. They can't all have been £$%^&* sites, a few at least (!) must have been written by hard working people who knew their business and whose sites were visited regularly by the public, who wanted to read what was written.

These are amongst the sites that have been trashed by the panda and I started this thread to see if anyone can suggest ways of getting round the obvious bias that Google has against affiliate sites. Perhaps you can suggest something constructive?

[suggy]

Superclown2

I didn't say ALL affiliate sites were pollution, I described two different scenarios. And, I think too many affiliates fall into the former. For them, it's not about visitors or utility, it's about getting one click ahead.

By extortion, I mean this: the 'one click ahead' affiliates pollute the search results, forcing down the real meat (what searchers really seek). They then extract a commission for taking their place! Again, I limit this assertion to a particular type. Again, I say that most webusers groan when they hit these types of sites and would cheer their demise. And, again I reaffirm that I am an affiliate myself.

Isn't in true for a lot of affiliates that if the public really wanted to read what they wrote, they wouldn't be so reliant on Google for speculative Google traffic and wouldn't need a plan B after Panda?! I mean, I can still find all the websites I know and love because I type them in directly!

And, what's this nonsense about obvious affiliate bias? My commerce site was decimitated by Panda, while my affiliate sites received a boost. I think this is a 2+2=5 conclusion.

By being direct and stearn, I was trying to be constructive. Too many affiliates are whinging instead of wondering why nobody really loves them (not just google!) and doing something about that. I suggest reading Sugarae's great blog post linked previously.

Then I suggest you revisit your assumptions about this update; I think they are flawed.

Oh, I am in the UK. Born here.

[superclown2]

Suggy
I'm happy to hear that your affiliate sites did well but a lot of Affiliates I know are in serious trouble because of all this which is why I'm looking for answers.

There is a particular niche I dominated for several years. The site I used for this was destroyed by panda but I had made six others a year or so ago ready to take it's place just in case of this eventuality.I have promoted some of them, and left others alone but they all remain rooted at the bottom of the second page in a big block whilst inferior sites have floated past them. Ok some of them are reasonable sites but the majority have just one single, poor quality page about the product, a lot of links to the rest of their site, a lot of ads and a affiliate link to a merchant that actually sells that product.

So: why are they above mine? The only thing I can think of that these sites have, and mine haven't is that they directly sell a related product and mine don't. Is this the reason that Google smiles on them? Or is this a red herring?

It could be a trust factor but my original site is in fact older than the majority of these newcomers and until the panda came along business was growing month by month. Then again perhaps I've missed something; all of this is still speculation.

I'm wondering if Google discriminates in favour of sites which fulfill a sales function, even when they act as affiliates for particular products, rather than pure affiliate sites. If this is correct - and that's a big 'if' - then affiliates may have to consider becoming their own merchants too.

[suggy]

Superclown2

True enough big-ish sites (not Amazon and Ebay size) got hurt, whilst small didn't. And, I can explain that. If you read some of the patent applications summarised briliantly by other SEOs, you'll find one that perfect explains this scenario. Basically, some spam research by professional researchers showed that there's a magic number in the likelihood of a cluster of pages being spam. I think it was above 10,000 or maybe more. Can't remember the specifics but, anyway, I remember reading it and thinking "Doh!" that's why my 20,000 indexed on site searches pulled me down! It's also why little sites get away scot-free, I think. They're below the statistical radar.... remember Matt Cutts everything on this side of the line expression....making sense?!

IMHO Panda is based on a statistical profile of your site that is matched with the statistical profile of likely spam. From that you probably get a Panda Trust Score which can have a nasty impact on your whole site's ability to rank for anything!

I have developed my own profile of likely factors based upon commonsense and Google's patents and what their objective was with the update.

[walkman]

Superclown2, bottom line no affiliate should rank above the merchant, unless the merchant doesn't sell ItemX and someone wants to buy it.

[thirteen]

Maybe a solution is to sunset stand alone website and move the content to Blogspot.com.

Panda places more emphasis on the whole website over individual pages. If you have a rich content page but your website is a small unbranded URL, it will rank lower than a brand name retailer. Brand Name retailers dominates the top SERP even if they have a thin product description.

Blogspot is a big name website and it is own by Google, so it is a trusted brand name site for Google search engine.

You can use Blogspot's credentials to move up in SERP. Move all your content from your existing site and blog it on Blogspot. Remember to noindex on the existing site so Panda don't see it as duplicate content.

[wheel]

Superclown2, bottom line no affiliate should rank above the merchant, unless the merchant doesn't sell ItemX and someone wants to buy it.

What? No way.

If you're looking for Dell servers, the maybe Dell's site is the best (and that's not as sure as you've indicated, maybe the manufacturer has a crappy website).

But I didn't just go looking for dell servers recently. I went searching for "1u servers in {location}". And if an affiliate had taken the time to compare dell, ibm, hp, supermicro and white label servers in terms of cost, energy consumption, expandability and so on, I'd have been tempted to buy through their affiliate link.

Because what I was looking to buy wasn't someone's namebrand. I was looking for a product. And an affiliate site could absolutely be the best site for me. And if not an affiliate, then an information site that is monetizing through affiliate stuff.

Why google should be freaking about a site like that, it's just wrong. Affiliates as salespeople absolutely bring a lot to the table. Or can, if they're so inclined.

[walkman]

wheel, unless each page is ranked on the fly by human raters Google can't tell jack on the value (even then, value would be subjective). A brand is a brand and people can judge by title and see what's bet for them. No one can fault a search engine for placing the brand name #1.

But I do have a problem on generic terms with Google. Suppose I search for insurance and they show all brands on the first page. That isn't best for user at all, showing a marketplace where they 'compete' is best for users. ^{But they are big $$ terms and are manually adjusted.}

[Whitey]

Affiliate marketing will survive because product has to be differentiated and represented in different ways. Site's that achieve this will likely prosper.

But against this it's worth noting that Google is introducing a never ending list of direct sales opportunities by shortening the supply line of distribution themselves, which occupy the SERP's more prominently, and these will only improve as well. The immediate success of Google is in targeting high volume verticals and business listings with the ever improving capacity to compare directly themselves.

[kidder]

Plenty of big and small brands were slow to adapt in the early days, they needed affiliates because they lacked the skills. I remember back in 04 / 05 suppliers treated me like royalty, things have changed so adapt or die as they say. Affiliates are to a certain extent the modern sales force and there are always going to be good and bad examples. We keep evolving and testing, if you stand still the Google train is going to roll you.

[Simsi]

Kidder's point is totally valid. Affiliates help level the playing field. A smaller brand in particular can benefit big time with affiliates and the consumer can benefit from that extra exposure because the bigger brand names don't necessarily produce the best products for each consumer.

The argument here should really be about thin affiliate content and whether that should be allowed to survive.

[superclown2]

The argument here should really be about thin affiliate content and whether that should be allowed to survive.

The purpose of the thread wasn't to produce argument about anything <G> but to ask for ideas to help affiliates survive and move forward in the post-panda world. What, to be precise, can an affiliate do to push a site higher up the SERPs for generic search terms when the top ten are blocked by thin 'brand' sites?

[Simsi]

The purpose of the thread wasn't to produce argument about anything <G> but to ask for ideas to help affiliates survive and move forward in the post-panda world

Fair point - just commenting on the diversion the thread took :) The diversion however does point at what I think the answer is though - be less thin and offer something unique.

[kidder]

Google is pretty thin on unique content...

[Simsi]

Google is pretty thin on unique content...

Thankfully. Or else they would be competing with us.