Is Google The Affiliates Worst Nightmare?
June 19, 2007 by Pablo Palatnik
It wasn’t too long ago (in internet marketing years I guess it is) that affiliates, at least a lot more than there are today, had great success just advertising in Google. The process was way more simple than it is today…that is until the almighty quality score came to play into the GOOG.
Even though the rest of the players followed into making their own algorithm changes in paid search quality score, Google is making an art of cutting affiliates out of the picture. I’m not saying affiliate marketing is dead in Google, but if you are just starting out, you’d better know exactly how to comply with Google’s quality score criteria if you want to have a reasonable bid price on keywords. Even than, as of last weeks quality score change and implementation by Google left many in the dark not knowing why some of their best compliant and converting keywords became inactive or their bid price was raised to $5 or $10 minimums.
Aaron Wall from SEOBook believes it’s Google favoring big brands and states, “As soon as enough brand advertisers find your space you are no longer needed.” Wall continues…”Thanks for sharing the keyword data needed to tell the brands what to bid on, and best of luck getting traffic from somewhere else.”
