Google Starts Clamp-Down On Affiliate Review Sites

August 5th, 2009 by admin

Search engine listings image If you use Google Adwords to promote affiliate products then you need to read this – because Google appears to be launching a big clean-up of sites promoting affiliate products.

Recently I posted about the FTC starting a similar clean-up campaign which many people decided to ignore but I don’t think we’ll be able to ignore Google’s decision now.

Although it’s early days as yet, a number of marketers using Adwords found that their quality score went through the roof overnight so they were paying enormous cpc. They seemed to think that it was happening to any landing page that had an affiliate link on it. Landing pages that had cloaked affiliate links, or re-directs were not affected (yet) but most experienced marketers feel that soon those landing pages will also come under Google’s hammer.

You can see Google’s point – so many affiliate landing pages all ending up at the same product makes it boring for web visitors – and so many bogus, ‘honest opinion’ review sites misleading visitors as to which product really does offer the best value. This is a valuable blog article here on the subject of scam sites.

Experts like Perry Marshall, Alex Goad and Glen Livingston have given their input about Google’s latest actions so click on those links if you want to know the whole scoop.

Although it looks as though Google are starting the clean-up with Adwords users, it’s highly likely that their seo algorithms will also change in the coming months so it’s wise to start adjusting your blogs and websites now.