Affiliates: Spam is a 4 Letter Word

I highly recommend anyone who has not found a copy of the leaked Google raters document go and find one ASAP.

Google's double standards with affiliates just make me sick to the pit of my stomach.

On page 100 they talk about "Sneaky Redirects, and give an example of what a sneaky redirect is. The example URL is a CJ link that starts with www.kqzyfj.com.

We know this is NOT a sneaky redirect, it's a redirect that goes through CJ's system so that the click can be tracked. It's blatant misinformation from Google. Lies.

I cringe to think what the average Google rater makes of this, anyone who has not had experience with CJ links will have no idea that Google is lying. That's probably 99.9999% of the world.

Any CJ link anywhere on a site is now cause for the whole site to be rated as spam if it is spotted by a rating pleb.

I sure hope CJ has something to say about this.

PS: If you can't find the raters doc, flick me an email; hunter at freshniche dot com, and I will happily oblige.

Brandbook.com seems like it is not being used much Aaron. You might want to buy it :-) You will definitely be safe from Google then. :-)

P.S. Regional Online Distributor - Classic :-) I think I will suggest creating that as an online partner program to my company :-p kidding.

Hi Aaron,

Seems like a lot of doom and gloom from Google lately. In your opinion is Affiliate Marketing still a viable business strategy?

Bill

Aaron, Bill,
I agree, the niche you are in can make a big difference, I think affiliate marketing is obviously getting more difficult, but I think the leaked raters doc actually gives some useful insights into this, if you look closely at the specific criteria they are using to torch sites it is somewhat enlightening.

@Aaron Unrelated to this - I noticed on your twitter bio a few weeks ago something about New Zealand? I'm a Kiwi, are you spending time in our sunny part of the world?

Just wanted to add that sites which earn monay as affliates also have a tougher time getting their site reconsidered by Google. Go check out the reconsideration form.

Quote - "In general, sites that directly profit from traffic (e.g. search engine optimizers, affiliate programs, etc.) may need to provide more evidence of good faith before a site will be reconsidered."

Nice.

Daniel,
Yes I've noticed the statement you quote, too.
In the past 12 months I have had the unfortunate experience of trying to get a site which profits from an affiliate program reconsidered, with no luck at all.
The site is 100% original content, written by myself with real, objective reviews of the products in question. All to no avail, unfortunately. The reconsideration team is not interested at all. The site took at least 200 hours of my time to build.
Despite this grim experience, I've come out the other side with some optimism, I've learned a few things.
I think the key is you need to be able to pass the G raters tests easily, so you don't end up penalised in the first place. The key is knowing what they are looking for.
The alternative solution to all of this is a new, better, more honest search engine that takes the world by storm and leaves Google looking greedy and stupid. I dream about this every night...

It's just like how Google says that Adwords is great for "lead gen" but that is one of the toughest things in the world to advertise with them. If you have an optin form on your website you have to make it so thick with superfluous information or Google will call it a scam. Yet, click on any Groupon ad on Adwords and you will land on a page that asks for your email address and nothing else! Just like arbitrage is banned but Ask.com still has Adwords ads all over.

The anti-competitive nature of this stuff is so flagrant. Why is the government not subpoenaing programmers from Google instead of just sitting there while Schmidt makes sad puppy dog faces and rolls around in his billions.

Aaron,
I agree absolutely with all your points, it's more than a little crazy... sometimes I feel like I'm going stark raving mad dealing with G.
I guess I was just chiming in with my thoughts on Bill's question to you, "is aff marketing still a viable business model", And the answer for me is that despite being almost squeezed to death by the Panda, I can still wriggle a little bit if I use every piece of information available to me, including leaked G docs I'm not really supposed to have,..
Am I happy about this? Is it fair? Absolutely not, on both counts.

It seems strange that you solicit seo consulting business (likely from corporations) and then support the anti capitalist occupy movement. Brilliant marketing strat there Aaron.

A little research on the rater program shows that it is a popular job for stay-at-home moms who don't want their children in daycare but can't afford not to make some money. Many of the raters are clearly fairly tech ignorant. On the one hand, this means they reflect the general internet population well. On the other, it means that they can't tell the difference between a 'thin' affiliate and any other affiliate, and obvously (to us) not all affiliates are thin, or add no value.

Interestingly, the same population represent a pretty strong core of the people who work for places like Demand Media for $7/article creating content farms.

My thoughts and frustrations, exactly. I agree with Big Bear you do a brilliant job articulating this situation.

If a Google rater was to review this little site: Google.com , what would they find? Incredibly thin website, with masses of duplicate content, PPC spam affiliate links and embedded “shopping” affiliate links masquerading as organic links.

Where does Google draw the line? They’ve entered the affiliate space and squeezing out competition. I would not be one bit surprised if they succeed on this front there will be a day that they will continue to move higher up the supply line, even manufacture their own products. Then we all live in a Google world. Yay.
In an economic time when small business needs to be fostered and encouraged as much to grow and prosper, Google are increasingly creating and elitist SERP that probably has more to do with how much you spend on Adwords than what actually benefits the user.

Google has an immense responsibility to the world, Information is everything in this Digital Age and like it or not, rightly or wrongly Google has become the gateway for this. But if they exploit this monopolistic position based on their own greed then action needs to be taken.
I find it hard to sit back and just watch this, I’ve contacted AVAAZ.org and asked them to do a campaign on Google’s antitrust (they’ve done one on Murdoch’s monopoly, why not Google). Google obviously doesn’t really care what the SEOs, Affiliates etc think of what they do, but perhaps if the bigger global community were aware of Google’s antitrust and support a campaign against Google based on principle there could be some hope. In numbers maybe we can do something.

Hi,

I have just joined so that can post on the blog and get the SEO tools.

Your welcome email says to fill out my profile but where do I do that?

Thanks for the email offer on the raters doc - I have emailed you,

Dale.

We are better off if we ignore what Google is saying and follow one thing: Google wants more money for Google. When we make this assumption, everything Google does makes sense. Deception and doublespeak are logical and expected rather than shocking and upsetting.

When it comes to scale, as pointed out with Groupon, all of these rules go out the window. If you look at the biggest advertisers, replace their account with one with no history and the brand "Geico" with "SEOBook auto insurance" and the campaign will simply not run. You are spam. In some cases larger advertisers are able to run ads which are clearly deceptive and go against guidelines which they actively enforce on smaller advertisers. I have a strong suspicion now that this is in fact institutionalized in Google's rating process rather than any employee going out of their way to overturn some sort of penalty.

Google will not disrupt a site or advertiser that will negatively impact their own quarterly earnings. When Google does disrupt one, it is because they have a backup in place. That backup may be their own internal project or a competitor of yours who sends 95% of their advertising through Google's ad platforms. When Google claimed they were going after content farms, and Demand Media's properties (which are explicitly spam) were spared, the reason was obvious, because it would have visibly impacted their bottom line.

Brand is a deceptive concept. A hairy, smelly drug addict that compulsively molests women is not a sex offender but rather a globally famous rock star. Much the same holds true to many of the biggest brands. As long as a brand spams, that spam is opaque to Google's customer base and their customers do not bring a negative association with Google's brand. However, when that same hairy, smelly drug addict is anonymous he is a nuisance which destroys your reputation when you publicly associate yourself with him.

Google is like an oil company which not only dictates the price of oil but also chooses where an oil field will exist. Google is now "too big to fail" as indicated by the recent DOJ investigation which could have resulted in a felony charge for their co-founder, and most certainly would have for a smaller firm without $500m of liquid cash. We should be thankful that visitors are still directed to our websites when they could simply receive excerpts of what they are searching for.

My conclusion: first, I monetize my existing sites with Google's own products as much as possible. Second: I no longer invest my time or money in new businesses that require Google's traffic. Google should expect more walled content gardens in their future. Google's biggest challengers such as Facebook and Apple recognize this, and their platforms are very much walled gardens. That is too bad for the web as we know it today.

As a consumer I want Google to have the best, most trustworthy experience possible. They can fight SEOs and affiliates all day long and it doesn't bother me. I fully expected the innovative waves that helped the web destroy old media do the same again to itself. But, when Google lies, and do things that in fact damage that consumers experience no longer can I defend Google (when eHow first started popping up in 50% of the searches I did I was shocked; I am absolutely appalled they still show up on page 1 for anything, the articles are obviously written by authors that re-hashed another article in 10 minutes and often factually incorrect on top of it.)