Affiliates must learn to deal with Google's Policies
Franklin Banker
August 13, 2006
Since I started as an affiliate in 1997 I have always enjoyed wonderful free access and relative success with my listings in the search engines for my created advertising pages, and have had many blessed top locations through the years. I feel strongly that this is due in part to the very professional way I choose to write my pages. I have always had high standards for my work online.
Everything was going well until a fateful day in May of 2005, when suddenly most of my informational gateway pages literally disappeared from the Google index. It was then that I realized that Google was driving most of my traffic. In one day I was left with about 12.5% of the traffic I had before.
That day was one that I will never forget. Prior to that day I had enjoyed over 1,000 unique visitors daily to my empire of websites, all from organic SERPS (search engine result pages). For the next 24 hours I received about 125 total, and that was mostly from other search engines that I had not been paying much attention to, and from other websites with links to my site. It was a shock. They didn't all disappear, but most did. What had happened?
After much message board haunting and posting, I finally realized what had happened; the new Google Spam Raters had visited me and deleted my listings almost entirely. I found extensive blogs about the new spam raters and their instructions targeting affiliate pages, and at first I was outraged. I think I even sent a complaint letter to Google (ignored of course).
After getting over the anger, filled with rational, creative thought I began to rewrite my pages. I added more information and tried to pass the spam rater minimum requirements, and failed over and over. I added forums to the pages, links to other sites that were not affiliate links, and other related things. Nothing worked well enough to return my traffic to it's previous levels.
One day about 3 weeks into the "Dark Time", I stumbled into an old email from Google. It was a welcome letter for Adsense, which I had applied for and then forgotten. I almost deleted the thing, but then got to thinking; why not add some Google Ads to my pages and resubmit them? Hmmmm ...
Guess what? Yes, you probably already guessed what happened. Every page that had previously been taken out by the raters got back in with the Google Ads at the top. I placed the code on every page on my site, and on every informational sales page I could find. The whole project was fruitful because it caused me to clean house, and I updated all of them.
The fun part was that I discovered a new revenue stream, Google Adsense. I felt somewhat disillusioned, but relieved. I thought Google is really getting revenue oriented, more that I ever imagined they could be, but then I am like that too, so I accepted it.
So, everything began to go back to normal for a month or 2, but the attacks were not over yet. Some new Google update involving the new Algos or whatever, began to drop my listings from the top to the bottom of page 1. Outrage after outrage! Then I began to notice some funny things happening where older pages for affiliate programs I had dropped from high priority began to produce again. HUH? Things were getting flop flopped here.
Of course I have always kept up with meta tags ever since the beginning, and all of my pages were loaded with them. Meta this, meta that, etc,. You name the meta, I had it behind every page. OK, so I went out on the forums again and got an SEO expert to look at my pages, and he suggested immediately deleting all the excess meta tags except for title, description and keywords. I did it right away!
At this point I was ready to inject Formalahide if that would work! If he told me to run through the forest screaming "Google ala Google" I would have tired it. Whatever I needed to do, to get my pages back in, I would do. This stuff was seriously affecting my income in a large way.
Guess what happened? Yes as you may have guessed, the pages rose in positioning again, but this time some of them never came back. I am really a purposeful guy, and obsessed with getting this all fixed and right, I set out to discover what the heck was going on now, and even though I did, I can't fix it this time. It turns out that I had done my job TOO WELL!
What I had unknowingly done was that I had created some top positioning organic pages which directly competed with top Google Adwords advertiser's links, and I mean in one case, it was such a good page that they have never allowed it in the index again, ever! I had begun my discovery and gut wrenching realization that Google was now just like all other corporations in that they protect their advertising assets, maximize their ad revenues, and let the casualties lay there dead. Wow, what a reality for me!
They were always good old Google, the search engine I had helped to promote when the beta version first came out. I had been asked by a friend to place a link to Google on my site due to the fact that hardly anyone knew about them then. I went ahead and linked to the new and emerging search engine the two brilliant young men had made. I knew it was a pretty good algo, because it worked a bit like the one the old Infoseek Search Engine had, but it was not as instantaneous and the Infoseek one had been. I liked it and used it ever since.
Anyway, I still am dealing with keeping up with the Google Spam Raters. Most of my pages are back in the index, but not in the top positions they were in prior to May of 2005, but they ARE there, so I am not complaining. Just a few of my pages are not allowed in the index at all, and the whole thing is quite mysterious as to why these pages can't be in it, but I assume they are again competing with top advertisers in some way. Of course, Google never communicates with us old webmasters about the reasons.
I have always loved the Google Engine. As a pure affiliate, I sell other people's products and services, and I do it through very professional presentations on search engines, and I have never sold a single product of my own. Heck, I have never even written an Ebook or anything. Just me and the search engines. I write a few articles here and there, but no ebooks. I am not even sure how to write an ebook!
Recently Google took a further anti-affiliate step where they targeted the Google Adwords advertisers, who in significant measure are affiliates. I was not affected because I do not use Adwords at all. Many years ago when they first started the program I tried it, and didn't enjoy the experience, so I stuck to the organic approach.
Now the Adword Advertisers must up the standards and content for their landing pages used with the Adwords system, and if they don't Google places their sites on page 2 or 3, and charges them up to 3 or 4 times the rate per click. Man oh man, that really got some of those "super affiliates" upset. I was reading all about it on blogs and forums all over the place.
The bottom line is that Google still allows affiliate sites, but our site must have excellent content, must provide value, and must offer more than just a few paragraphs of hype and hard sell. I don't completely disagree with this change, but what worries me is that eventually Google will phase us out of the index altogether. That would be completely unfair in my humble opinion, but every few months we seem to see another indication that they hate us affiliates.
I have to say this, and I say it because it is completely true. Many of us affiliates have been successful because we have been able to create pages that actually ranked better than the affiliate merchant pages that we represented. At least, in some cases, that has been my experience. I don't like the idea that an affiliate webmaster can be penalized for doing a good job selling for his or her merchant affiliate partner! After all, our informational pages are not much different than the political ramblings of some editorial writer. They just serve a different purpose. It is all information, and that is what the search engines are supposed to be gathering; Information!
I hope Google will rethink this anti-affiliate policy a bit, and plan for the inclusion of our websites and informational pages in the index for a long time to come. After all, many of us older webmasters were there to help Google in the beginning. In the true spirit of the internet, we should all have a fighting chance to remain in the scheme of things without fear of being put out of business without notice! Please be fair Google. Remember your old friends.
Everything was going well until a fateful day in May of 2005, when suddenly most of my informational gateway pages literally disappeared from the Google index. It was then that I realized that Google was driving most of my traffic. In one day I was left with about 12.5% of the traffic I had before.
That day was one that I will never forget. Prior to that day I had enjoyed over 1,000 unique visitors daily to my empire of websites, all from organic SERPS (search engine result pages). For the next 24 hours I received about 125 total, and that was mostly from other search engines that I had not been paying much attention to, and from other websites with links to my site. It was a shock. They didn't all disappear, but most did. What had happened?
After much message board haunting and posting, I finally realized what had happened; the new Google Spam Raters had visited me and deleted my listings almost entirely. I found extensive blogs about the new spam raters and their instructions targeting affiliate pages, and at first I was outraged. I think I even sent a complaint letter to Google (ignored of course).
After getting over the anger, filled with rational, creative thought I began to rewrite my pages. I added more information and tried to pass the spam rater minimum requirements, and failed over and over. I added forums to the pages, links to other sites that were not affiliate links, and other related things. Nothing worked well enough to return my traffic to it's previous levels.
One day about 3 weeks into the "Dark Time", I stumbled into an old email from Google. It was a welcome letter for Adsense, which I had applied for and then forgotten. I almost deleted the thing, but then got to thinking; why not add some Google Ads to my pages and resubmit them? Hmmmm ...
Guess what? Yes, you probably already guessed what happened. Every page that had previously been taken out by the raters got back in with the Google Ads at the top. I placed the code on every page on my site, and on every informational sales page I could find. The whole project was fruitful because it caused me to clean house, and I updated all of them.
The fun part was that I discovered a new revenue stream, Google Adsense. I felt somewhat disillusioned, but relieved. I thought Google is really getting revenue oriented, more that I ever imagined they could be, but then I am like that too, so I accepted it.
So, everything began to go back to normal for a month or 2, but the attacks were not over yet. Some new Google update involving the new Algos or whatever, began to drop my listings from the top to the bottom of page 1. Outrage after outrage! Then I began to notice some funny things happening where older pages for affiliate programs I had dropped from high priority began to produce again. HUH? Things were getting flop flopped here.
Of course I have always kept up with meta tags ever since the beginning, and all of my pages were loaded with them. Meta this, meta that, etc,. You name the meta, I had it behind every page. OK, so I went out on the forums again and got an SEO expert to look at my pages, and he suggested immediately deleting all the excess meta tags except for title, description and keywords. I did it right away!
At this point I was ready to inject Formalahide if that would work! If he told me to run through the forest screaming "Google ala Google" I would have tired it. Whatever I needed to do, to get my pages back in, I would do. This stuff was seriously affecting my income in a large way.
Guess what happened? Yes as you may have guessed, the pages rose in positioning again, but this time some of them never came back. I am really a purposeful guy, and obsessed with getting this all fixed and right, I set out to discover what the heck was going on now, and even though I did, I can't fix it this time. It turns out that I had done my job TOO WELL!
What I had unknowingly done was that I had created some top positioning organic pages which directly competed with top Google Adwords advertiser's links, and I mean in one case, it was such a good page that they have never allowed it in the index again, ever! I had begun my discovery and gut wrenching realization that Google was now just like all other corporations in that they protect their advertising assets, maximize their ad revenues, and let the casualties lay there dead. Wow, what a reality for me!
They were always good old Google, the search engine I had helped to promote when the beta version first came out. I had been asked by a friend to place a link to Google on my site due to the fact that hardly anyone knew about them then. I went ahead and linked to the new and emerging search engine the two brilliant young men had made. I knew it was a pretty good algo, because it worked a bit like the one the old Infoseek Search Engine had, but it was not as instantaneous and the Infoseek one had been. I liked it and used it ever since.
Anyway, I still am dealing with keeping up with the Google Spam Raters. Most of my pages are back in the index, but not in the top positions they were in prior to May of 2005, but they ARE there, so I am not complaining. Just a few of my pages are not allowed in the index at all, and the whole thing is quite mysterious as to why these pages can't be in it, but I assume they are again competing with top advertisers in some way. Of course, Google never communicates with us old webmasters about the reasons.
I have always loved the Google Engine. As a pure affiliate, I sell other people's products and services, and I do it through very professional presentations on search engines, and I have never sold a single product of my own. Heck, I have never even written an Ebook or anything. Just me and the search engines. I write a few articles here and there, but no ebooks. I am not even sure how to write an ebook!
Recently Google took a further anti-affiliate step where they targeted the Google Adwords advertisers, who in significant measure are affiliates. I was not affected because I do not use Adwords at all. Many years ago when they first started the program I tried it, and didn't enjoy the experience, so I stuck to the organic approach.
Now the Adword Advertisers must up the standards and content for their landing pages used with the Adwords system, and if they don't Google places their sites on page 2 or 3, and charges them up to 3 or 4 times the rate per click. Man oh man, that really got some of those "super affiliates" upset. I was reading all about it on blogs and forums all over the place.
The bottom line is that Google still allows affiliate sites, but our site must have excellent content, must provide value, and must offer more than just a few paragraphs of hype and hard sell. I don't completely disagree with this change, but what worries me is that eventually Google will phase us out of the index altogether. That would be completely unfair in my humble opinion, but every few months we seem to see another indication that they hate us affiliates.
I have to say this, and I say it because it is completely true. Many of us affiliates have been successful because we have been able to create pages that actually ranked better than the affiliate merchant pages that we represented. At least, in some cases, that has been my experience. I don't like the idea that an affiliate webmaster can be penalized for doing a good job selling for his or her merchant affiliate partner! After all, our informational pages are not much different than the political ramblings of some editorial writer. They just serve a different purpose. It is all information, and that is what the search engines are supposed to be gathering; Information!
I hope Google will rethink this anti-affiliate policy a bit, and plan for the inclusion of our websites and informational pages in the index for a long time to come. After all, many of us older webmasters were there to help Google in the beginning. In the true spirit of the internet, we should all have a fighting chance to remain in the scheme of things without fear of being put out of business without notice! Please be fair Google. Remember your old friends.