One question I get asked every so often by fellow Internet marketers is “does Google really hate affiliate marketers?”
I usually ask in return “are you a good one or a bad one?”
Of course, this question ultimately leads to the infamous and proverbial “Google Slap.” If you’re not aware, this is Google’s way of cracking down on advertisers that it perceives to be doing bad practices.
You know you’ve been Google Slapped when your Adwords ads start to drop significantly in quality score, leading to poor ranking performance and more expensive bids. Over a period of time, you’ll notice less and less clicks on your ads, costs getting higher and conversions getting lower. Long story short, you’ll be losing money on the advertising and conversion ends, which won’t be too hard to ignore.
So why is it happening? Does Google really hate affiliate networks and people like you who make money off of them? Is the conspiracy theory that Google thinks of affiliate networks as a threat to Adwords the reason for all this slapping?
The truth is out there, but if you ask me, I’m taking Mother G’s word for it right now: affiliate marketing is just fine with Google.
According to every Google rep I’ve ever talked to, there are three main factors in how ads are judged by the Adwords system. These are:
1. Click-through rates (CTR) – This is Google’s way of determining good ad copy from not-so-good ones through the behavior of searchers. You see, Google doesn’t have the ability to tell whether ad copy is good or bad. It can only tell what’s relevant.
Human behavior is a much more complex thing than any Google algorithm, and there are a lot of times when a seemingly bad ad can outperform a seemingly good one. Nobody knows exactly how this happens. It just does. That’s why I preach A/B and multivariate split testing all the time: it’s our best hope as marketers to see what works and what doesn’t before we commit to a campaign.
Google understands the complexities of humanity and makes it the biggest quality score factor in Adwords by applying the CTR principle. The more an ad is clicked, the higher its quality score gets. If it’s being ignored for a long time, Google assumes that it’s no good and could lay the Slapdown on it. Bottom line; make your ads as creative and compelling as possible so that they get clicked on.
2. Ad text relevance and campaign structure – Google places heavy emphasis on how relevant an ad’s headline and description is to the keyword it targets. The less relevant the ad text is to the target keyword, the lower its quality score gets. This drives up the costs per click and makes it harder for an ad to rank. If this doesn’t discourage an advertiser, the Google Slap could very well be coming.
The rationale on Google’s part is easy to see: it doesn’t want searchers who are looking for cough medicine to click on an ad and end up on a page that sells Viagra. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the target keywords need to be mentioned at least once in the ad text. If that’s not possible due to a large number of target keywords, you can write separate ads that are more suited for the job.
3. Landing Pages – THIS is where I know a lot of Internet marketers, especially those who are trying to generate income with affiliate networks, are at risk for the Google Slap. In past blog posts, I’ve talked about how Google uses a different bot for its paid search results. This is how Google determines the relevance of a destination page to its ad text and target keyword. The landing page is where Internet marketers seize the chance to convert and I’ve seen a lot of creative ways of doing it.
Sadly, some of these “creative” ways of making money reflects poorly on Google’s quality guidelines. Google has nothing against landing pages per se, but it does hate shady and low-quality web pages with a passion. Every so often, Internet marketers stray into gray areas between creative marketing and outright violations of Google’s policies. When that happens, poor performance on Adwords usually follows. Repeated offenses yield the proverbial Slap.
Here’s a quick list of landing page elements that may provoke Google’s ire:
Shallow arbitrage sites – These are sites that were made to display ads and funnel cheap traffic to advertiser websites. These can also be sites that contain one or two reviews about a product and nothing else. This category of sites include the practice of buying domains that contain the product name and the word “review” (e.g. “www.examplereview.com”) to lead readers into false review pages. These sites usually contain a single manufactured review written to endorse the product and not to critique it. As you may guess, the end goal is to sell the product through an affiliate link, which Google finds unethical and deserving of punishment.
- Fraudulent practices and bogus claims – Landing pages that claim you can make a million dollars by laying down on your couch while watching TV fall into this class of shadiness. So do websites that deceive you into giving your contact details so they can spam you or assail you with sales phone calls. Google ad reviewers usually spot these and manually penalize sites that are practicing it. Be careful with your claims. Place them into the realm of the realistic and don’t ever try to con people.
- Malware – If your site infects visitors with spyware or viruses, Google is guaranteed to give you a serious slap. In some cases, an internet marketer may not even know this is the case. It’s normal: sometimes sites get hacked and some bozo plants malicious code on your site’s pages. Your best bet is to use Google Webmaster Tools and check the site diagnostics section. If there’s malware, have your web developer take it down.
- Annoying content – This includes unskippable videos, aggressive pop-ups, splash pages and script that nags users to stay when they try to exit a site. This topic is a little gray, since the subject of annoyance can be very relative. Most of these elements do not automatically trigger penalties, but if enough bad rap is picked up at the Google HQ, you could get in some trouble.
Some marketers will argue that these elements help conversion rates and that’s FINE – I believe them. I’m just saying that there are certain things that Google doesn’t like and you’ll have to decide on a balance between maintaining good conversion rates while staying in Google’s good graces.
RESOURCES: Check Out ANYTHING related to Affiliate Marketing from Jeff Johnson. Jeff is a true “Super Affiliate”, and understand that 95% of affiliate marketing success stems from understanding how to leverage quality of sources of Traffic.
Google NEVER Slaps his offers – and there’s a reason why.
Here’s a link to a free video series he’s currently publishing:
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