Any thoughts?
From the Amazon TOS:
Are there any restrictions regarding my Web site's URL?
No one can participate in the Associates Program whose URL contains the word "amazon" or any misspelling of the word "amazon," such as "amzaon." Such use violates Amazon.com's trademark, proprietary, and other rights. In addition, we do not allow Associates to use Web sites whose names violate of the rights of third parties.
available from the associates website under
Help>Appropriate Conduct
Regards,
The TOS seems to clearly say URL, not domain, so the examples you posted seem inconsistent with the TOS.
you have to register for both www.amazon.com and myhumbleddomain.com
You're wrong.
Subdomains are assigned by the domain's authoritative name server.
So, amazon.humbledomain.com and www.amazon.humbledomain.com could be set up by the dns administrator of humbledomain.com.
I use many, many subdomains in front of my domains, but never with the intention to mislead. I just want to give an idea of what the site will be about.
2004olympics.humbledomain.com
dieting.humbledomain.com
paris-hilton.humbledomain.com
are all fine by my personal code.
Using a trademarked term or the name of another company/entity would not be something I could sleep easily doing. Now that technique come to be identified as a common phishing lure anyway:
citibank-customer-service.junkdomain.ro
-------
However, I have always used folders in my display URLs that identified the affiliate program if I thought it would lend credibility.
humbledomain.com/amazon
humbledomain.com/seinfeld
has been my mainstay for some time and I see no problem in doing that.
patient2all
If I tell you, "check out this site, go to /somewhere/nicepage.html". You won't be able to open that page, because you don't have the domain.
Searching for define:URL in G, also shows some good results.
I run campaigns for clients. May I use
adwords.example.com?
[edited by: eWhisper at 11:54 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2005]
[edit reason] Please don't hyperlink example URLs. [/edit]
If I tell you, "check out this site, go to /somewhere/nicepage.html". You won't be able to open that page, because you don't have the domain.
I will however land on your index page rather than get a 404. If the subdomain was inserted just to lend credibility to the site and landing on the home page had the potential to produce a sale, then mission accomplished for that unethical advertiser.
patient2all
sub.domain.tld
e.g.
amazon.myhumbledomain.com
I suspec that what Google really meant was that they would disallow duplicate domains.
Reasons:
- Google's search engine treats each subdomain as an individual site
- Many individual sites are subdomains of the same domain - for example blogspot.com
I expect that some smart affiliate programs will offer their affiliates their own subdomains, to get around the new ruling.
But I also expect that Google staff will try to stop this from happening...
