Day of the affiliate coming to an end?

[c1bernaught]

Does the start of Froogle mean the end of affiliate sites that sell products? I think it does.

Most affiliates do not fit the criteria to get into Froogle. So, Froogle becomes a big retailer only club. I have a feeling that this will be an economic disaster for both companies that rely on affiliates to sell products and for small business sites that sell these products. Some companies that offer affiliate programs have upward of 10,000 affiliates. That's 10,000 small businesses!

What experience does the end user want? I've looked through Froogle. It's pretty cool if you know what you want. If not, it's page after page of mind numbing pictures and prices. It seems users would like to go to a site and peruse the products, descriptions and prices.

I don't know... I hope Google does.

[SlyOldDog]

Isn't the value of a site what the user see's as valuable? If a user is searching for green widgets and his/her first search brings up what he/she is looking for, isn't that what a good SE does?

Let's say this site doesn't have in depth information on green widgets, but does have a link to the site that does. Is that of less value? The user found what they needed.

I agree absolutely. The best site is the one which gives the user what they want. If you can present the information in an optimal format, all the better. I don't see any reason why Google would drop affiliates form their index either, provided they give users what they are looking for. Still though, anyone who has a positive experience of Froogle will use it for price comparissons even after reading the product reviews on Google. With the possible exception of when the are doing basket shopping and it makes no sense to order from 3 different sites when 1 site can do it all.

One footnote. I said Froogle saved me a thousand dollars on a photo accessory. Well, watch out users. That site offering the great price had taken all the adaptors out of the box and were selling them as "extras". When I totaled the whole lot up I saved exactly....nothing.

[c1bernaught]

Hmmm... Google going IPO... What does this mean? Looks like they need to find a way to keep the adwords coming in. Do you think that a seperate commerce index would help?

[europeforvisitors]

Looks like they need to find a way to keep the adwords coming in. Do you think that a seperate commerce index would help?

Isn't that what they're doing with Froogle?

[soapystar]

the main reason affiliates get a bad name is because affiliate programs attract a lot of spam tactics and duplication. The better affiliate sites do provide the most relevant and useful information for a given topic. Users don't mind its an affiliate site. They pay the same price for goods whther they do direct to the main site or they get there through the affiliate. The problem engines have is the results are bcoming dominated by near duplicate sights and in affect diluting the results for the user. the future surely is better filters for duplication leaving the genuinely informative sites indexed. I see affiliates as the future not a past. The casual net broswer these days are shopping online, thats the big growth, thats whats feeding the affiliate wannabes. Filtering simply filtering on the basis of whether a site has an affiliate link or not is going to run aganst what the net is becoming and growing to be. what you may see are more specialist engines for non-commercial searches, i believe froogle is going in the wrong direction. Its a specialist engine for commercial searches and de-listing sites that users actually want.