Possible Legal Action/Class Action Google

[trapp120]

I will try to keep this brief.

I'm looking into my legal options against Google, Inc regarding a recent ban from using their Adwords service going forward and would like to talk with U.S. advertisers that have been dropped as well, without much of an explanation or a warning.

About Me:
I've been an affiliate marketer since Sept. 2002 and marketing on Google Adwords as an affiliate since its inception. Ad spend is in the low six figures each year and 2008 revenue was roughly $1,000,000, with traffic converted from advertisements on Google counting for a very large percentage of the revenue.

I can go on and on about my theory as to why Google is suddenly cutting advertisers that are affiliates, but I want a little more data before publicly "calling them out" and pursuing litigation against a tactic that effectively eliminates fair competition in a marketplace.

Those with similar experiences, please get in touch with me.

Thanks.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

Good luck trapp120,

I wonder if you might get more eyeballs and replies to this thread from the right people, if you got a mod to edit the title to add the word affiliates. I know lots of affiliates recently got the ban hammer and it might help you get their attention.

[paulgl]

Well, you need to find the right lawyer.
There are plenty of firms that do nothing but class actions.
But google does not blink often. They like their $20 billion in the bank.
But if their TOS allows them to change/delete at will, it will be a tough
sell, even to the best of class action lawyers. You may need to do
an end around with a unique legal theory. But hey, that's why the
lawyers make big bucks, right?

Good luck to you, however. Keep us posted.

Paul

[lanta99]

Wow, the title about suing Google made me just had to come here.

Anyways I took a quick look at Google's TOS Google Terms of Service and couldn't find anything about affiliates.

You should first make sure that they banned you because you're an affiliate seller though before spending money on a lawyer.

Well, anyhow good luck!

[trapp120]

Thanks guys, and yes I agree that they're definitely a tough fight. I mean, who wants to lose? When a company like GEICO can go up against Google and essentially declare a "draw", then it doesn't bode well for an underfunded small business owner to take on a multi-billion dollar company.

However, Linda, I think you're correct in finding those people - which was the point of this post. It may be in the wrong forum. If a mod could put this in the general forum that may draw more interest.

On a related note. I talked with a friend today (old acct manager) that confirmed 8 of 10 of the top affiliates he used to manage directly got the axe as well from Google. That's millions of dollars in yearly ad revenue Google is throwing away! And for what reason? Unless they want more ad dollars from the primary business directly, it makes no sense. Nearly every advertiser uses landing pages of some sort, many with little to no text content - so that's a poor excuse to cut an advertiser.

[guzie]

Originally Posted by trapp120

I will try to keep this brief.

I'm looking into my legal options against Google, Inc regarding a recent ban from using their Adwords service going forward and would like to talk with U.S. advertisers that have been dropped as well, without much of an explanation or a warning.

About Me:
I've been an affiliate marketer since Sept. 2002 and marketing on Google Adwords as an affiliate since its inception. Ad spend is in the low six figures each year and 2008 revenue was roughly $1,000,000, with traffic converted from advertisements on Google counting for a very large percentage of the revenue.

I can go on and on about my theory as to why Google is suddenly cutting advertisers that are affiliates, but I want a little more data before publicly "calling them out" and pursuing litigation against a tactic that effectively eliminates fair competition in a marketplace.

Those with similar experiences, please get in touch with me.

Thanks.

Let me get this perfectly clear. Google says I cannot promote anything on adwords related to affiliate marketing. Including my affiliate program or anyone else's affiliate program? If this is true then I need to get on the band wagon.

I have recently read posts, articles and emails from people who are saying "Google is getting to big for their on shoes". If this is true we need to start ungoolizing ourselfs from this monster. There is one word that comes to mind...."Monolopy". This means a market in which there are many buyers but only one seller.

Paul

[Lucid]

Originally Posted by guzie

Let me get this perfectly clear. Google says I cannot promote anything on adwords related to affiliate marketing. Including my affiliate program or anyone else's affiliate program? If this is true then I need to get on the band wagon.

No, that's not correct. Google does not want Adwords to be used to promote affiliate pages. You can still send your clicks directly to the merchant's page, no problem. The problem is all these ads that are promoting essentially the same thing, the same affiliate. That's what Google is getting rid of. So if you have a page full of affiliate links, delete your campaign. Direct link instead.

Google is not a monopoly. You have many other options. By the way, don't expect things to be any better at Yahoo or MSN. My opinion if they are to compete, they will have to apply similar rules in their PPC programs.

[trapp120]

Originally Posted by guzie

Let me get this perfectly clear. Google says I cannot promote anything on adwords related to affiliate marketing. Including my affiliate program or anyone else's affiliate program? If this is true then I need to get on the band wagon.

I have recently read posts, articles and emails from people who are saying "Google is getting to big for their on shoes". If this is true we need to start ungoolizing ourselfs from this monster. There is one word that comes to mind...."Monolopy". This means a market in which there are many buyers but only one seller.

Paul

Paul, I don't believe Google "says" anything about not allowing affiliates. I believe Google finds various ways internally to weed them out. It may be an attempt to make more money directly from the source, or it may not. Without hard evidence, it's purely speculation at this point.

That being said. The recent targeting of affiliates is not a fluke. For the last year Google has been "slapping" affiliate listings under the guise of "poor content" and/or "quality score", though these listings/pages often contained adequate content, and were 100% relevant to the keyword, advertised product or service. At minimum these listings/pages were on par, if not more relevant than most of a direct company's listings/pages.

I used to have an ad that ran for about a year, generating $1,000 dollars profit per day and I was spending $400+/day. Then, Google slapped my ad. Great! Now I have to start over. Well, here's the kicker. The same URL from the ad (index page), with the same EXACT content/page as my landing page was #3 for the same term on the organic results! It still sits at #9 and I can't even pay Google to let me advertise...sad.

Since we (the affiliate marketers) figured out all we had to do was buy a new URL and start marketing again, they've taken the next step - suspending accounts.


I don't believe Google understands how valuable affiliate marketers are for companies, including theirs.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

trapp and all,

This is a REALLY important article to read. I posted this in another thread, but thought it may be helpful in this one too.

In the recent round of Google slaps that were supposedly about landing page quality - AdwordsAdvisor (supposedly an official Google rep) explained what the slap was really about and it was geared toward certain types of affiliate sites, not so much landing pages or quality scores.

Read about it here:

Google Mass Bans & Warns AdWords Advertisers, But Why?

Certain kinds of websites (ref1) are not allowed per our policies because the user experience is of low quality or we consistently receive negative feedback from our users about these kinds of pages. These sites include:

* Data collection sites that offer the false promise of free items, etc., in order to collect private information.

* Arbitrage sites that are designed for the purpose of showing ads

* Affiliates who provide limited value by being a bridge page with the intent of solely driving traffic to another site or who are framing an affiliate site