I am only posting now because there is no contact info for Webmaster World to ask them what's up. I didn't think there was anything controversial about my post but now they've got my curiosity up. Or maybe they are just checking to see if this truly came from Google. Maybe this AdWords support person at Google told me something they weren't supposed to, but I doubt that because it had the look and feel of a form reply.
Okay, one little hint. It had to do with the number of merchants you as an affiliate could have on your site. Having only one is not acceptable. That was news to me. Anyone else know that?
[edited by: engine at 9:44 am (utc) on Oct. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]
[webmasterworld.com...]
But you CAN roughly paraphrase, which does the same thing. In fact, listing the important points in plain English can clarify and be easy for others to respond to, one by one.
Any "rulings" regarding Adwords for affiliates can have a serious impact. If I remember correctly you mentioned an ad not being acceptable if there's only one merchant linked to on the page on the affiliate's site, that there needs to be more than just one. I can understand a little bit of what the reasoning behind that might be, but it definitely creates several problems it would be important to discuss. Besides, I can't find that anywhere in the section on affiliates in the Adwords guidelines.
Frankly, I think this would fit perfectly in the Affiliate forum, because if it's so, it can impact many people's business model.
Discussions about moderator or administrator actions are welcome in email or local private messages, but should not be discussed in public forums. This is out of respect for the members and moderators or policy involved.
Discussions about moderator or administrator actions are welcome in email or local private messages, but should not be discussed in public forums. This is out of respect for the members and moderators or policy involved.
I looked for a Webmaster World email or Contact Us link but could not find one. Is there one?
And I did not post the Google email as is. I believe I just included a couple of key sentences. Perhaps I should have edited even those. Should I do that now and post it or wait to hear from WW?
And yes, maybe it should be posted in the Affiliate Programs Forum. If true, this is pretty significant and has great implications for all affiliates, but it is also relevant to the AdWords Forum. I wonder why Google didn't come clean on this from the start.
Thanks for the advice.
[webmasterworld.com...]
But let's get on to the meat of the matter because yes, this can have a serious impact on an affiliate's mode of salesmanship and how much value they can provide for their merchant partners in terms of sending them targeted traffic that will convert - which is what affiliate marketing is all about.
Granted that "thin" affiliate sites that do nothing more than crank out tons of pages with nothing more than the same materials from the same datafeeds that hundreds or thousands of others may be also doing are not adding any value whatsoever to either the search engines' index or for the experience of surfers, shoppers and customers - but not everyone does that. Some people at Google seem to have a bug up their behinds that the way to add "value" to affiliate sites is by price comparison, but that doesn't even comee close to the reality of salesmanship and marketing and it is certainly NOT the only appropriate model, nor the only effective way to sell and in some cases, if not most cases, price comparison is highly ineffective.
That's what I believe the "more than one merchant" is all about, and it's disregarding some of the basic, foundational principles of salesmanship and marketing.
If you're not a price comparison site, NO SOUP FOR YOU!
[edited by: Marcia at 10:41 am (utc) on Oct. 21, 2006]
Specifically, was it number of merchants on the site mentioned, or number of merchants on a particular page? There's a difference between the two.
But if the user is presented with more than one link to different sites from which they can choose, the ad
will be considered for approval.
Google said they strive to give users a positive experience. This includes giving the user diverse options with the AdWords ads. Protecting the user experience was what motivated this affiliate policy.
[edited by: Widestrides at 8:18 pm (utc) on Oct. 21, 2006]
Having only one offer per page? Had not heard that one before. Sometimes Google Employees do not fully understand their own policies. Not sure I understand this one if it is true...
The policy kind of makes sense, you can have only one url, but if you have 20 affiliates with an ad and they all lead back to the same merchant, then you are skirting the rules.
Basically they are saying if you are only offering one choice, one merchant on your landing page, then you are not providing much of a service or a positive user experience.
So they are still tolerating affiliates and landing pages, but less and less so. Unique content was also part of the qualification.
We do allow affiliates to advertise with AdWords. However, to provide the best user experience possible, we do not permit ads for bridge pages that are solely intended to direct the user to the parent company's website. This behavior leads to a results page that is essentially the same, and perhaps more confusing, than pre-affiliate policy days when multiple ads for the same domain could be found on a search result.
Affiliates generally have 3 options for their landing pages in order to comply with our guidelines:
1. Provide a unique user experience with content above and beyond text from your affiliate masters site and your links to their products.
2. Offer multiple option for a user, with unique text describing each and offering some sort of comparison of the merits of each product.
3. Link directly to the affiliate master site, which means your ad could potentially not show if another advertiser with that display URL would be ranked higher in the results.
If you provide a unique and content rich experience, you'll be fine.
AWA2
for me, i don't think this is new - bridge pages have been whacked for some time. i was worried some new policy was emerging that ignored value (content, rich experience, etc) and that somebody was asserting that having just one merchants links on your page would get you whacked on quality scoring, which isn't the case always.
nothing new here, in my opinion (but am grateful to see awa2 explicity state things).
I was led to believe that ANY affiliate page that linked to only one merchant would be rejected. I based this on the following phrase from the email I received from AdWords Support, but your post clarifies that unique content can still do the trick even if an affiliate is promoting just one merchant.
It was this phrase that had me thinking otherwise:
If an ad directs to a landing page that lacks unique content and that promotes only one specific merchant, it will be treated as an affiliate link and will be disapproved.
Thanks again for clarifying.
