More Google Bad News?

Sorry - this is the article:

Google is cracking down on multiple industries they have deemed "Illegitimate." This guy isn't the only one BTW...
Below is a comment I got on the blog today. It's from Scott Phares, who is being told that Google considers the industry he's in to be illegitimate. He's not the first, believe me. Nor will he be the last.

He's in MLM. Those of you who know me know I'm no big fan of MLM. But that is totally irrelevant to the subject at hand. I have seen the same thing in totally unrelated industries, things that have nothing to do with affiliate marketing or business opportunities.

Where Google makes a sweeping judgment and sweeps a bunch of advertisers away. Businesses are suddenly DOA.


"Yep, you are right. Google definitely tightened the screws ... already. I found out the hard way yesterday. All my PPC ads were disapproved or their Quality Score went so low they won't ever display. I called an 800 number I have for Google and spoke with one of their adwords reps.

Google no longer considers network marketing, affiliate marketing and MLM businesses as "valid" businesses. As a result, they have disallowed all ads forwarding to affiliate links/sites, bridge pages that then forward to an affiliate site, and any site that contains or mirrors all or portions of a parent company site. Even my ads for my own personal biz site landing page and home business web sites went down.

They did not disapprove them, but they immediately lowered my Quality Score (from GREAT to POOR) so low that the ads never display. The adwords rep. also told me that to get my Quality Score back up, Google would have me increase my bid so high that it would kill my ROI completely. To all - be prepared, you may not see this happen until you edit an existing ad or create a new ad, then Goggle will review all your campaigns, that's when all your MLM, home business and affiliate ads will drop.

I moved all mine to Yahoo last night until we all can come up with a solution to this. This is going to shut down every ad anyone has running on Google as an affiliate where you have registered a domain and have it forwarded to your affiliate links/sites. I am looking forward to your call on Monday at noon CST, hopefully you will have some suggestions as to a solution."

I recognize that there are some areas that generate lots of complaints, and Google is trying to provide a quality user experience. However this is NOT a trend any advertiser should be feeling good about. First it's anyone Google thinks is an affiliate... then it's an MLM guy... then it's someone who sells a hair growth formula... then it's YOU.

If you're saying to yourself, "Well I'm in a legitimate business, this could never happen to me," think again. By whose definition of legitimate?

Sleep with one eye open.

And don't go down without a fight.

And don't let Google be your only means of getting new customers.

And somebody please, tell Yahoo and MSN to get their friggin' act together. A mutual fund company that USED TO OWN $500 million of Yahoo stock couldn't get them to wake up, 3 years ago. But... maybe somebody else can.

If Google's the only game in town, then Google is Big Brother.

Perry Marshall

P.S.: Surely you've heard versions of the following quote - it applies here:

"They came for the Jews and I did not react because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unions and I did not react because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the communists and I did not react because I was not a communist. Then they came for the social democrats and I did not react because I was not social democrat. Then they came for me and there was nobody left to defend me."

About the Author

Hey, I used a couple of cool techniques to get an old site "Platinumpen.com" that no longer exists. We were on the front page of Google, and within six months had grossed nearly $1,000,000 selling a brand new product. The product? USB PENS. That's right the USB device was inside of the pen so that when you took the cap off, you had a USB. Pretty cool? Hell yes. We sold a boat load to some of the largest corporations in the World. Guess what? I think Google saw that we were successful, and banished our company from its search engines all together! It was freaking horrible. We also used Google adwords on our site for extra revenue. But I think Google still likes to see the little guy win more than a big guy. When a human at google is having a bad day or perhaps they are marketing the same product or niche, then you'll be vaporized from its culture. Carefull!

Google has rules for a reason.. to protect their assets..

Do I agree?... not all the time..

Do I adhere to them whenever necessary in order to profit richly from the service they provide... YUP!!.. ya damn right.

Adwords is a tool to USE not to be USED by.

Google didn't slap M.L.M (which is just another business model, like many others), google slapped thin and drab MLM squeeze pages being used for pay per click..

This is sooooo boring now, here's the thing.

If YOU are using Google for traffic(you don't have to use Google, so it is a choice you make), then you must, at all times, ensure that the traffic you're driving from their site is provided with a unique and refreshing, pleasant user experience.. not just a squeeze or copy.

Would you link FROM your site to another site that would upset your potential customers?.. NO, so why should Google?

Peace

Jay

This is Perry Marshal's website if you want more information. If you don't know who Perry Marshal si you should check him out. He is the master of Adwords. (I am not an affiliate, nor do I have any involvemnt with Perry Marshal)
Google is cracking down on multiple industries they have deemed "Illegitimate." This guy isn't the only one BTW…

Google has an affiliate program of its own. Kinda weird.

Oh no...not again!
Not when i'm just about start out!

I am sometimes amazed at the sheer and awesome power that Google posesses to make or break businesses.. It seems very odd that many people depend on google for their traffic and then depend on the traffic to make advertising money via adsense from google. Talk about a crazy relationship...

Thats not bad news Thomas thats great news.

As a google customer who uses their product I get sick of the adsense pages that provide no real content.

Poorly created squeeze pages and all the crap.

I say good on them.

As for MLM I rang my mate at google and he said not all the MLM just the hackers.

Great news.

Quentin

That's why it pays to diversify your traffic generating methods, way too risky to put all your traffic eggs into one basket. That's scary, I remember the days of 5 cent clicks and who even knew what quality score was?

Google will keep making changes but marketers will evolve accordingly, that is a big one though. Even with a recession they're turning mega bucks down with this decision.

Watch this space I guess.

Well, I can say that I'm used to bad news from google
so this is not surprising me.

Hi, thanks for the update. Just confirms the point you need pages with actual content as opposed to affiliate squeeze pages. Glad I am on the right track. Good luck.

To be honest, I think folks try to overcomplicate things. It all boils down to providing fantastic content and building links steadily over time. The problem is most Internet Marketer's can't wait and they want immediate results. So they resort to half a**** efforts that lead to half a**** results.

...neat idea about the USB pens though ...hopefully you made some money before Google pulled the plug.

God bless Google ... hmmmmm

Just dont do Adwords is my take on this.

I wonder what happen if affiliates everywhere closed their Google PPC campaigns for 24 hours??

The thing is some many of us are at their mercy, maybe we do need to spread our risk more and also look to come together with one voice ...

Anyone fancy forming an Affiliate/IM politcal party

John

I don't think it's as bad as Perry M. made it out to be.

Google isn't going to say "no" to affiliate marketing en toto. They run their own affiliate network and they like the ad revenue too much to turn the money spigot off.

They just have to balance that with the risks associated with sending people to low-quality sites via ppc ads. The ad money doesn't flow if ad clickers aren't happy with what they find on the other side.

The only real cause for concern is that Google does have the power (and has exercised it before) to basically wipeout entire niches on Adsense. They can either ban the ads outright or torpedo landing page quality scores to crush any potential ROI for targeting a specific niche Google decides it doesn't like.

That's what seems to be happening with some of the MLM stuff and that should ring a few alarm bells, especially for those who might be working in niches that are populated by more than a handful of marketers with "questionable" products and/or ethics.

Let's slow down here just a bit
because assumptions lead to
hysteria.

Google's main issue is adding value.

"Marketing is a set of processes for
creating, communicating and delivering
VALUE to a customer." - X

The "average" ppc marketing affiliate
does not create, communicate or
deliver any value to a customer, at
all.

Direct linking, and especially masked
linking does not add value.

Most affiliates and MLMers are not
adding any value - this is the
fundamental problem with their
approach.

Perry is overstating the issue,
as he has in the past, by saying
Google is out to get affiliates -
no, Google is out to get a certain
TYPE of affiliate.

Google's approach to dealing with
this issue is NOT to ban anyone
appearing to promote a product as
an affiliate; Google's approach is
that your destination URL must now
be on the same URL as your display
URL - this, however is rumor right
now but clearly that eliminates
direct linking, a number of tricky
tactics some of us affiliates have been
using, etc.

In short - you need to own the site
where you're sending people. I am
sure this solution solves a ton of
Google's headaches (for now).

I don't feel sorry for anyone caught
in these crosshairs - I've been
teaching my customers that this is
stupid for years. If you're going to
be in the game, then this is for your
own damn good.

I've had to delay the release of the
Affiliate Black Book because these
changes - which Google itself hasn't
written about publicly, that I've seen,
but has been validated with a bunch
of people I've talked to - will have a
huge impact on how affiliates are
doing business. But what's cool about
that is if you work affiliate marketing
the RIGHT WAY you could be making
a whole lot more money than you
have been.

Right now, this means some affiliates
have a lot of work to do if they want
to stick around - the one's who've
been doing it right all along are going
to jump ahead in the meantime.

All the best to you all - X

So what exactly is a quality page?

Can I use Adwords to promote my squeeze page? What about if the squeeze page was filled with golden info that the end user would love?

It seems (from what I hear) Google will not be happy until we pay to send people to websites that make no money at all lol.

Top affiliates (yes you), please show me an example of a page that is both.. good in Googles eyes (non slapped and beneficial to end user), and is being monetized.

Louis

Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines - AdWords Help

That's what Google has to say about landing page quality. I know it's not a concrete example, but I'm loathe to hand out URLs in a well-trafficked forum--a little like telling the local burglar when you're going on vacation.

The LP standards, interestingly, are becoming more and more like the regular ol' webmaster guidelines every day.

This is the best news I've heard all day... There was a guy in this forum shooting his mouth off a few days ago about making money with PPC and how us product creators are wasting our time creating products and selling them instead of promoting CPA via Google Adwords.

Karma's a _ _ _ _ _!

Mike Hill

I had a similar problem selling that "cocaine" energy drink many moons ago. (Calm down its just a name/marketing ploy)

Google banished me like a leper.

then ebay and others hopped on the band wagon it was a nightmare!

But I really enjoy google's products, so no hard feelings.

You all may find this interesting : http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ogle-slap.html

Regards
Steve

Whoohoo, now the SEO industry is going to boom again.

Maybe, maybe not.

My personal opinion on this is data capture pages (squeeze pages).

For those of you who are slapped, go have a look at your merchant's site. You'll see that 90% of the campaigns that are being slapped are affiliate landing pages leading to merchant pages that have email capture forms. This is not the case for all merchant landing pages but most definitely CPA landing pages.

I have experienced this new pain myself, but it's not the end of the world.
Affiliates just need to create "fatter" sites AND study their merchant's landing pages.

Reinhardt

Perry Marshall is an extremely credible source, so I guess we are going to just have to wait and see how this pans out.

I think Google mostly is going to be looking more for quality, and not banning everyone promoting affiliate programs.


Regards,

Shannon Herod

Yes, the fella who said Yahoo and MSN better get their acts together is very right. We can't afford to continue having only Google dictate the game, as they just can't be trusted.

I don't even try to make great QS sites anymore. I have developed my own system that consistently makes OK QS sites and (SO FAR) stay that way. But to make money on adwords you need to be putting out many sites all the time, because you don't really know if it will be profitable until you test it on PPC. This is covered in the campaign blast method. But you don't want to waste too much time on any site that has not proven itself to be profitable.