Google's Secret Guidelines On Thin Affiliates
Journalist Henk van Ess has caused a flurry of excitement on
blogs and forums.
In his blog he revealed that Google uses teams of humans all
over the world to evaluate the accuracy of Google's search
results.
These "international agents", who are paid $10 to $20 an hour,
were recruited mainly through universities. They're paid to
check search results at Google every day.
Don't be distracted by the debate over whether Google should be
doing this.
Of course it should. It's just a form of quality control.
Google can use the evaluators' findings to tweak its algorithms
and reduce search engine spam.
What affiliates need to pay careful attention to is Google's
"Spam Recognition Guide for Raters", which Henk revealed.
If you're a "thin affiliate," beware.
Although the report is a year old, about 80% of its contents are
still being used by Google's evaluators, Henk says.
The confidential document gives us an unvarnished look at
Google's attitude to affiliates.
If you're using any of the "manipulative techniques" Google
describes, this report will probably encourage you to take a
hard look at your website.
I hope you're not silly enough to be using hidden links or
hidden text. Not surprisingly, Google teaches its "raters" how
to detect them.
Are you creating pages without much content with the aim of
collecting pay-per-click (PPC) revenue? Google's raters are
taught to mark such pages as "Offensive", and gives examples.
Google secret guidelines spend some time discussing different
ways in which some affiliates display results from pay-per-click
search engines, so if you're doing that, you'll definitely want
to study this report carefully.
Are you displaying ads disguised as search engine results?
Google finds them offensive.
Are you adding a dmoz.org feed to your site with the aim of
earning PPC revenue? That's "offensive", too.
Google says:
"We differentiate between affiliates that produce extra
service, value, or content, and those that simply are duplicates
of other sites, set up to boost traffic to other sites and earn
a commission for it. The former ones are not Offensive and
should be rated on the merits to the query. The latter ones are
Offensive... "Thin affiliate doorways are sites that usher
people to a number of Affiliate programs, earning a commission
for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content
or service to the user. A site certainly has the right to try to
earn income; we're attempting to identify sites that do nothing
but act as a commission-earning middleman."
To Google, affiliate links such as qksrv.net, bfast.com and
myaffiliateprogram.com - on the page or in redirects - "strongly
suggest" that the site is a thin affiliate.
Are you using an affiliate datafeed? To Google, that's another
warning sign.
However, if you offer a comparison of prices between different
online merchants, you're OK, you're not a thin affiliate.
Google provides an incredibly tough guideline, which hundreds of
thousands of affiliate sites fail to meet.
Google says:
"Do not call a page affiliate spam when an affiliation is only
incidental to the message and purpose of a website. To determine
whether participation in affiliate programs is central or
incidental to the site's existence, ask yourself this question:
Would this site remain a coherent whole if the pages leading to
the affiliate (merchant) were taken away?"
That probably counts out most affiliate sites.
In summary, if you want to be friends with Google, make sure you
provide extra value or content.
I've quoted only parts of the report. Any serious affiliate will
want to study the whole thing carefully.
You can read the full report on Henk's blog here...
http://www.searc
hbistro.com/spamguide.doc
Note: A Google employee broke a non-disclosure agreement by
revealing this report. I don't know how long it will stay
online. You may want to do what I did - save a copy of it on
your hard drive.
Now we know what Google really thinks of affiliates. You've been
warned.