jan 18 p3

Google AdWords, Affiliates, and Relevancy - A Change on the Horizon
by Matt Naeger, Thursday, January 13, 2005
THIS PAST WEEK, GOOGLE MADE a change to its AdWords policy limiting the number of ads published by affiliates and parent companies that drive traffic to the same Web site. This policy shift has caused a lot of ripples in the online advertising industry since its release, but the question still remains, "Will this new policy have any real effect on the relevancy and value of the AdWords results?" The answer will depend on where Google goes from here.

There were two statements in the e-mail release regarding the new policy from Google that were particularly telling: The new policy will permit display of only one ad per query for "affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL" and "Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by the change."
These two statements indicate that the policy will only affect affiliates that don't build and manage their own Web sites, but instead simply direct traffic to the parent site via an affiliate code appended to the URL string for identification purposes.
In my opinion, this will be a welcome change to Google's policy as users will no longer be directed to the same destination page when clicking on different AdWords displayed for the same query. This doesn't mean that you won't be sent to a page that will then ultimately direct you to the same place - now you just may have to stop at an interim page somewhere in the middle.

Obviously, I don't feel that this policy will bring an end to affiliate marketing as it is known today. However, I do anticipate that it will be more difficult for affiliates to purchase AdWords ads. I haven't spoken with anyone at this point that feels affiliates will be put out of business because they will now have to create their own Web site to support their ads, but the hope is that this policy will help to create more relevant paid results.