Google Pushing Mortgage Loans.

[GetReal]

So if you search on Google for ‘Mortgage Loans’, I see that Google has entered into the fray with their own site.

Google com/comparisonads/mortgages

So with all the talk about poor landing quality sites/pages, can someone explain to my how this site should be considered a high landing quality site? No original content, site is specifically designed to drive traffic to other domains. Seems like this site violates many of the Google rules about landing quality.

Should I confer that the landing quality only refers to users of Google, and not Google themselves?

GR

[Baylow]

Actually, Yes.

Let me start by saying that i'm not justifying their actions, but explaining their thought. In Google's mind, they are supposed to be the page that indexes the web's information and provides the user access directly to that information. Having a 2nd site between Google and the end informative site, to them, is a "bad user experience".

Google can make money, perhaps even more money, if they embraced affiliates and bridge pages as to fill all those gaps the retailers and info sites will not fill.

Google doesn't apply their policy to themselves because in their mind: "if you had our direct organic traffic you could do this too, but since you're buying it from us we make the rules."

[GetReal]

But in this instance, Google is the 2nd site, and that site has no unique content, it just redirects users to a third site. Hence, a clear violation of Google's own rules, terms...

I realize Google does not want affiliates, but I want them to come out and say so…Is that too much to ask for?

[Baylow]

Google doesn't see themselves as a 2nd site any more than you'd consider a sub page on your site as a secondary site. Again, i'm not saying they're correct in this but this is how they are thinking.

Google, for all it's .com technie vainer, actually moves quite like a glacier in things like this. They take a little at a time until you wake up one morning and they're right at your doorstep. I expect that one day in the next few years you'll see a little advertised TOS change that says affiliates are flat out banned from the index and all advertising programs. By the time this happens most affiliates will have been drained dry by QS penalities and will have left the network anyway so it will go by relatively unnoticed.

[edited by: Baylow at 5:55 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2010]

[GetReal]

Baylow good input...

I always thought the affiliate marketing model would slowly die, just never thought Google would be holding the smoking gun...