So you’ve been Google slapped eh? You are not alone. I had some extremely lucrative landing pages Google slapped last week. They probably represent a good 40% of my income at the moment. Ow. There’ll be a few less strawberry daquaris in Vegas for myself and dear old Duncan I can tell you!

This is my 4th largish incident with good ‘ol Google in my 4 year career as a full timer.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected I have to say. I knew they wouldn’t pass muster for long… I’d simply disguised the affiliate nature of the page. I’d hoped they’d hold out till I was home as I’d no time to create the amount of content required to get them compliant because of my travels. But hey ho… this is the nature of affiliate marketing these days!

Sounding a bit too cheerful am I? No funeral dirges, wailing, gnashing of teeth or general anger at Google? Nope. This game is about risk and reward. The rewards are great… but sometimes the risk will inevitably catch up with you.

So How Have I Insulated Myself From Google Induced Cardiac Arrest?

Anyone in immediate dire straits looking for a Google liferaft should move on now. This isn’t about a quick fix, it’s about planning and preparation.

What’s The Plan Stan?

1 ) I know EXACTLY how to fix the current issues and move forward. Nobody can tell you about that better that Kieron in his article about creating iron clad Google Adwords Landing pages. It’s really, really important not to stick your head in the sand when you hear them affiliate rumbles in the jungle about an impending algo change. They are often well founded. Although I’ve not been able to keep up with my content creation, I have kept an open mind about moving on and constantly improving my content.

The moral? Always innovate. Affiliate marketing is a constant process of learning and change. Don’t get left behind.

2 ) I don’t have all my eggs in the Google basket, or the landing page basket. That way, these little Google curve balls can’t send me racing off in the direction of paid employment. Gah!! I get cold sweats just thinking about that one. I’ve always got enough running on direct to merchant and other PPC engines to make sure our lifestyle is assured.

3 ) I actually have enough money for Duncan and I to live quite happily for 2 years sitting in the bank. I NEVER live up to the standard of the money I’m earning. I save it, and spend about 25%… still a great lifestyle and this removes any financial stress during a Google slap. Alright, that one is easier to say than do guys and gals, but it is something every affiliate needs to think about. Our finances are volatile. Don’t get lulled into a false sense of spending security when the good times are a rollin’!

4 ) I’m pretty confident in my own ability to get my 40% back within 3 to 4 months. Why? Because I always have some extra revenue ideas up my sleeve. I plan and think 6 months ahead at all times. When the Google slap comes crashing down it’s off to the notebook to dredge up all my current ideas and get cracking!

Perhaps this will help you in the future. It’s certainly helping me right now. It means we can still go to Vegas for a start!

Well, it seems that contrary to my speculation in my previous post, E-bay’s move to stop affiliates using Adwords paid search advertising had absolutely nothing to do with the auction giant looking to reduce costs on its in-house PPC by removing affiliates from the Adwords arena.

The two online giants are apparently having a bit of a lover’s tiff over E-bay’s refusal to discuss providing Google Checkout as a payment option for E-bay’s online buyers and sellers. Google checkout is a direct competitor to E-bay’s own in-house payment system – Paypal.

In response to this, Google planned a party named “Let Freedom Ring” to promote Google Checkout on the same day as Ebay’s own event, E-Bay Live. The aim was to bypass E-bay and promote Google Checkout amongst the seller community in order to create some support for the adoption of their own payment system. E-bay sellers can be an influential bunch, and have successfully campaigned for change in the past.

As soon as E-bay caught wind of this, they were naturally quite perturbed, with a spokeswoman commenting, “We don’t view that kind of activity as an appropriate activity for one partner to do to another.” Ebay then switched off all of their Adwords US advertising. Ouch. In response, Google have now cancelled their party but there is still a wide ranging outbreak of “petted lips” amongst various executives at E-bay and Google towers.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out! Thanks to Rob At MarketingDrome for dropping me a wee e-mail about this one.

Read more here: –

ZD Net
Searchengine Land
Discussion at Webmaster World

There’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the American side of the pond this morning as several horrified Adwords advertisers wake up to discover they’ve been hit with a huge hike in their minimum bids. I’m not sure as yet if the UK has been similarly affected, cos noboby there has got up yet! *Update* – Yep the UK is affected too! Check out the A4UForum thread on this.

There’s a couple of threads running over at DigitalPoint and WebMasterWorld with the usual (understandable) emotional outpourings that accompany Google’s decisions of an affiliate-crushing nature.

Having read the threads, I was actually quite surprised this was new news to the chaps affected. Us UK types vented our spleens on this one last November in a thread over at A4UForum (this is worth a read if you have been affected and are looking for some workarounds). Could it be that only changes affecting Arbitrage pages have been actioned stateside? I’m unsure. *edit* It seems that this must be an “improvement” to the last algo update to mop up some activity they didn’t wipe out with the last update.

This time I’m viewing this episode from the outside. What I really find interesting about the way people react to these kind of updates is the feverish hysteria that can actually lead to you missing the point when someone in the know tells you exactly what has gone on and why. Good old Keiron Of UKOffer fame (gosh, I must have a crush on him this week). Has jumped right into the fray and told them straight what’s happening. Very few people have paid any attention to him so far…. they’re far too intent on their distress at their situation, and their irritation at what they see as yet another pointless and possibly flawed Google Adwords algo change.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising these poor blighters. I know I’ve done exactly the same and worse in the past when good old Google has chucked me one of life’s curve balls. Ask my other half. He’s the poor sod who’s got to deal with me in my moments of stress. He deserves a bravery medal just for remaining in the house with me some days . Having feverishly checked my account this morning, I’m totally unaffected. Phew! For the first time ever, this has left me in a situation where I can calmly appraise the situation rather than my usual attempt to reach orbit without the aid of a space vessel.

The main lesson I personally take from this new-found perspective is that it’s important to approach these seemingly disastrous changes calmly and with a bit of a “C’est La Vie” attitude. Easy for me to say I hear you cry? Well yes, it is. But I’ve been hit right in the guts by a seemingly career-ending Google decision more times than I care to recall. Each and every time I’ve managed to recoup at least 60% of my losses within 6 to 8 weeks. Terror is a great motivator for me personally. If only I was that focussed all the time!

After my various experiences I can honestly say the best reaction to this has to be “Right. It’s happened. Lets get past the annoyance and work out what to do about it.” The clues are always easy to find. It’s just a question of being calm enough to see them.

Good luck to everyone affected… I know exactly how you feel right now.

So will I be able to take my own good advice next time Google surgically removes 50% of my income? Will I F*ck as like!!

Keiron has now kindly written an article on his blog about how to create adwords landing pages that won’t get banned. Nice one!

I read about this first on James Omdahl’s blog. Thanks James

Teenage boys all over the world are breathing a sigh of relief today after Google won a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Perfect Ten. The lawsuit was taking Google to task over naughty images from their site being displayed in response to image searches.

Perfect Ten were apparently seeking to protect the images because they feared they would undermine their attempts to sell self same nudie pics to people using mobile phones.

Now, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, it would be a very simple task for Perfect Ten to add a robots.txt command preventing content being indexed from their site.

However, it seems that Perfect Ten were also contending that Google were responsible for results being returned from other websites using Perfect Ten’s images without permission.

How exactly did numpties expect Google to police that one? I know they’re good technically, but how could they possibly comply with any court ruling ordering them to stop showing these images? The only way I can think of is shutting down the service altogether, which I assume would have been the possible result of a successful case.

This would no doubt result in several hundred thousand teenagers reporting drastically improved eyesight

More Information at BBC News.

I’ve read a couple of things on various blogs and forums recently regarding lawsuits brought by people who have the right royal hump with Google over one thing or another. I decided to go off on one of my random end-of-day internet searches to see just who is suing the great G-Meister this month, and why.

A lawsuit was filed against Google recently for infringing a patent on hyperlinks. Google committed the heinous crime of adding options to links. The lawsuit was filed the same day the patent was granted. Can anyone spell “opportunist”?

Here’s another cracker. Apparently they’ve given someone a bad ranking. There’s a bit of a new slant on this one though… this time Google are being sued because a building contractor doesn’t appreciate the fact that Google indexed bitter complaints by consumers about their service which rank second in response to queries on the company name. Not so much a bad ranking as a bad review. Food critics had better watch out on this one, a precedent could well be set.

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In the last few days, Google has rolled out its GoogleCheckout service to UK merchants. On the face of things, it’s a great deal for UK E-commerce sites. It offers great fraud protection and promises to reduce costs by fighting chargebacks on behalf of the merchant and increasing conversion rates. It’s even offering consumers £10 off all purchases over £30 when they use the system for their purchases.

What’s the problem then?

A vast proportion of sales originating from affiliate links will simply not be tracked.

The checkout system works on the basis of approved tracking providers. If your network hasn’t jumped through Google’s hoops to qualify for inclusion in this new checkout system, you won’t be paid your commissions. Merchants with concerns about affiliate tracking have found that Google Checkout is an all or nothing gig. The big G won’t allow them to revert to another checkout system for sales originating from affiliate links.
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