Google slaps affiliates and advertisers

Google slaps affiliates and advertisers

As you are probably aware, Google came out with a punch in the stomach for advertisers at the beginning of this month. And by that i mean a serious slap to anyone using direct-linking or different dynamic insertion techniques on their landing pages. Were you one of them?

For most advertisers, that meant ruin. Keywords that used to cost like $0.05 - $0.20 and had great CTR, are now over $10. Campaigns with great Quality scores were cut from the root. Make your own math here… How and why did Google do this?

How it’s simple. They introduced multiple Quality score rankings:

1. Overall Account Quality Score: Does your overall account perform ‘Below Average, Average, or Above Average’
2. Campaign & Adgroup Quality Score: ‘Below Average, Average, or Above Average’
3. Creative Quality Score: Landing page relevance to ad text and keyword

Lot’s of advertisers saw their campaigns go in the Poor zone over night. And all they could do is pay the prices needed. But come on, how can a x000% increase in keyword’s price be still profitable? You can read more about this problem here.

Why is even simpler. They want natural SERP rankings. That’s why they hit MFA sites, link buyings and now Affiliates. I wonder what’s next? Will they hit proper SEO made sites as well? Or what?

Of course, there were some guys unaffected by the slap. And it shouldn’t amaze us one of them was Amit Mehta. You can find out what he advices advertisers to do in order to be protected by these kinds of slaps in this article. Pay attention to what he’s saying there, he’s absolutely right.

I for one was not really affected by the slap as i run very few Adwords campaigns. But how about you?

Category: Making Money Online
Tags: affiliates, Google, links