Google's new policy limiting affiliate ads
I'm interrupting our series about Search Engine Optimization to report on a major news event in the world of internet marketing.
Back on November 26th, in this post titled Google Kiss of Death ... I mentioned a rumor that Google was considering getting rid of affiliate AdWords ads.
Well, it's now official, the rumor was mostly true, and the new policy is (in my opinion) done very well, and will be a good thing for real marketers.
What has happened, in a nutshell, is that Google will only allow a single ad, for a single search term, to go to a specific URL. In other words, if there are multiple people bidding on the same phrase and they all send traffic to an amazon.com page for a specific book title, only the highest bidder's ad will be shown.
Is reality, after digesting the news, that could turn into a good thing for those that can take advantage.
First of all, Google's intent is to make the searching experience more pleasurable and relevant for searchers. I believe this policy will do that. Instead of 8 affiliate ads sending traffic to the same page, the searcher will have 8 different ads, with 8 different destinations, to choose from. That's a good thing, and should keep Google from losing frustrated searchers to other search engines (and of course that should mean that advertisers on Google will have a larger number of viewers).
Second of all, an advertiser no longer has to specify the "affiliate" wording on his or her ad, giving more room for an actual description. That's very, very good. After all, the description is only 2 lines of 35 characters each, and each one is precious. Taking at least 4 characters (aff plus the preceding space), is not only inefficient, but it's ugly and proven to reduce clicks on ads.
Third, Google is not preventing (is in fact encouraging) affiliates to send traffic to their own "landing pages", which can then later send the visitor to the affiliate site. As long as the link doesn't go directly to the merchant, and isn't done in a sneaky way such as with redirects or framing, there's no restriction.
To me, that means that being an affiliate became a more professional trade. No longer can someone read a book, slap together an ad, and send traffic away, waiting for the money to roll in. Now they typically will have to at least register a domain, learn some HTML, and design a nice looking page that presells the fact that the searcher, now that they're there, should click again to go to another destination. Of course it gives the opportunity for the webmaster to get mailing list signups, to review the product that is being searched for, to provide comparisons of similar products, and to give the visitor reason to wander around the rest of the site.
Those that take the time to learn the skills of web page design and copywriting should have a definite advantage over those without those skills. To my way of thinking, this should definitely enhance the web surfer's searching experience. And isn't that why Google is doing this to begin with?
Stay tuned, you'll probably be seeing many new eBooks on how to succeed with the new AdWords rules. The old books are now suddenly out of date.
Back on November 26th, in this post titled Google Kiss of Death ... I mentioned a rumor that Google was considering getting rid of affiliate AdWords ads.
Well, it's now official, the rumor was mostly true, and the new policy is (in my opinion) done very well, and will be a good thing for real marketers.
What has happened, in a nutshell, is that Google will only allow a single ad, for a single search term, to go to a specific URL. In other words, if there are multiple people bidding on the same phrase and they all send traffic to an amazon.com page for a specific book title, only the highest bidder's ad will be shown.
Is reality, after digesting the news, that could turn into a good thing for those that can take advantage.
First of all, Google's intent is to make the searching experience more pleasurable and relevant for searchers. I believe this policy will do that. Instead of 8 affiliate ads sending traffic to the same page, the searcher will have 8 different ads, with 8 different destinations, to choose from. That's a good thing, and should keep Google from losing frustrated searchers to other search engines (and of course that should mean that advertisers on Google will have a larger number of viewers).
Second of all, an advertiser no longer has to specify the "affiliate" wording on his or her ad, giving more room for an actual description. That's very, very good. After all, the description is only 2 lines of 35 characters each, and each one is precious. Taking at least 4 characters (aff plus the preceding space), is not only inefficient, but it's ugly and proven to reduce clicks on ads.
Third, Google is not preventing (is in fact encouraging) affiliates to send traffic to their own "landing pages", which can then later send the visitor to the affiliate site. As long as the link doesn't go directly to the merchant, and isn't done in a sneaky way such as with redirects or framing, there's no restriction.
To me, that means that being an affiliate became a more professional trade. No longer can someone read a book, slap together an ad, and send traffic away, waiting for the money to roll in. Now they typically will have to at least register a domain, learn some HTML, and design a nice looking page that presells the fact that the searcher, now that they're there, should click again to go to another destination. Of course it gives the opportunity for the webmaster to get mailing list signups, to review the product that is being searched for, to provide comparisons of similar products, and to give the visitor reason to wander around the rest of the site.
Those that take the time to learn the skills of web page design and copywriting should have a definite advantage over those without those skills. To my way of thinking, this should definitely enhance the web surfer's searching experience. And isn't that why Google is doing this to begin with?
Stay tuned, you'll probably be seeing many new eBooks on how to succeed with the new AdWords rules. The old books are now suddenly out of date.
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