It is Official : AdWords Policy Takes Aim at Affiliate Ads

[eWhisper]

Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]

---

The paraphrased version of the email:

There will be only one ad displayed per serach query per domain.
The ad with the highest Ad Rank will be displayed.
This means affiliates and merchants will compete against each other for positioning.

You no longer have to identify yourself as an affiliate.
Google will not change the ad text, you must do this manually.

If you use a unique URL for your landing page, you will not be affected by this change.

[europeforvisitors]

I will maintain that this has not been handled well by Google

I certainly wouldn't dispute that!

[delizia]

Another observation:

We PPC affiliates obviously make money on the difference between affiliate revenue and ad spend, so it's conversion conversion conversion. All other statistics should concern us much less.

Anticipating Google's move (thanks to this forum) I built a [merchant] XML clone shop and created some ads that deep-linked to the cloned page instead of the merchant's page for a particular product.

The result? Zip. Much fewer clickthroughs, but most of all, no sales.

OK, the site was crappily designed and the code does not work very well. But the money I spent there was totally wasted.

So with the new system the choices I have are:

1. Use a landing site or datafeed clone shop, spend the same $100 / day I spend today and make only $80 / day in affiliate earnings because of poor conversion. Or:
   
2. Continue deep linking to the merchant pages, spend only $20 / day in PPC and make $40 / day because the merchant's site converts much better
   

This means that of course I better choose (2) unless I can create a site which converts at least half as well as the merchant's - and with their brand and their design budget, that's basically impossible.

... unless, that is, I have original content.

My conclusion:

I believe that Google and the major merchants (I am sure they were consulted) have decided to squeeze out PPC affiliates, or rather, to marginalize us.

Merchants will still get genuine "content" affiliates, but will likely not get any competition on Google for any keyword they can think of (and for the keywords they can't think of, there's still us poor affiliates).

I wish someone with more inner-circle Google access could comment!

[FromRocky]

Would the two ads be allowed to coexist?

Anyone's 2˘ will be very helpful!

My $0.02: No

If any ads which contain example.com in their URLs are considered to be the same URL, by Google according to AWA. However, there will be some exceptions, AWA said.

[skuba]

Also, is it 1 affiliate per domain or per url? The whole URL would have to match, to be considered the same? Well, if the tracking code is part of the URL, than they would never match, cause each affiliate has a different tracking code.

I don't know, but I just searched google for DVD and saw 3 results going to amazon on the first page? How do you explain that?

[PeteM]

IMHO opinion, Google have got their terminology wrong. It's one ad per domain per search. Change hasn't yet been implemented.

[triumph]

So I thought the change was going to be implemented today.. Adwords results look the same to me... anyone see a difference?

[Rhino]

they're in a special time zone... they vary the offset as they please. so implementation exactness is only relative to their local space time continuum. comes in handy for them, cuz they're never late this way.

[beejay34]

I kind of understand Goggle’s point but they are being extremely inconsiderate to the people whom made them the monsters they are today (affiliates). Let's keep it real, affiliate programs built Google. Now that they've made there billions they don’t need the little people anymore because that's what it comes down to.

As for the repetitive ads displayed, that is Goggle’s fault for displaying Ads with the same URL on one page. I typed in a search for textbooks and saw 3 different ebay ads on the same page. That is ridiculous because it does not give the user many options. Maybe Google needs to figure out a way to display one Ad per page to make it fair for everyone. It should be based strictly on CTR not CPC which means the better Ad wins. That's what marketing and sales is all about anyways.

[Widestrides]

Can we take the affiliate or aff tag off both direct to merchant ads AND landing page ads? Or was that a new policy only for direct to merchant ads?

It is not clear in the official Google e-mail, but since the e-mail was pertaining to direct to merchant ads and not all affiliate ads, I think we still have to use the Affiliate or Aff tag on non direct to merchant ads.

[PeteM]

No I think you're reading too much into the email. Remove aff tags for all ads.

[Nikke]

I'm happy to say that my direct-to-merchant-via-affiliate-network ads still display. They are not aff-marked, and it looks as if there is still three of us left bidding for pretty much the same keywords. Two of us with the same domain in the URL and using the same affiliate network links.

My ad uses the actual official url of the store examplefied as www.example.com/widgetstore
My competitor uses the www.example.com domain only

The third built a site of his/her own that redirects the click (again via the same affiliate network).

All three ads end up on the same landing page. None of us use the same URL but two of us are sharing a domain.
My ad is in the top position, and I'd like to stay there, but I'll tell yall the minute the AdWords team cracks down on me.

<added>None of us use the Aff tag.</added>

[wayne]

Its now the 13th, and it looks to me like the changes
have not been implemented yet. I still see many
multiple domains coming up in my searches.

[emoshe]

It seems as something has changed. However, for most amazon products I could see *two* ads pointing directly to Amazon: One by Amazon itself and the other by an affiliate. Does that mean that Google allows one ad by the merchant and one by an affiliate?

[eWhisper]

Discussion Continued Here:

[webmasterworld.com...]