Google Slam Dances Their Affiliate Partners

It's the middle of summer and Google has decided to once again change the rules while their affiliate partners are out playing in the sunshine.

Google affiliate partners are the AdWords publishers who run all of those contextual ads all over their websites, blogs and ezines.

I hate to say I told you so, but if you've read any of my blogs I've been saying that all affiliates and webmasters need to diversify their ad revenue. If you go with 100% Google, you will get burned eventually. And, to make matters worse Google will not tell you why they revoked your account. You have to guess at what you did wrong. Oh, and you can forget getting another Google account ... time to look at Yahoo or Kanoodle or TextAds or Adbright.

And the Google publishers aren't the only one's hit by this change in Google's summertime feel-good policy. According to the folks at Affiliate Classroom, "With the recent update of Google's landing page algorithm, many marketers that had been paying five or ten cents a click (or less) are now required to bid at least 50 cents to a dollar or more. There are also reports of some advertisers who have kept their bid prices, but those bids are now buying only 3rd or 4th page ad positions, where they used to buy first page positions."

And you thought the price of gasoline was high this summer?!!

I really think this is Google's first move towards addressing the ... let me rephrase that ... towards crushing other affiliate programs out there. I predicted this move after Google partnered up with Commission Juntion and forced CJ to change all their affiliate links to JavaScript links.

http://affiliate-blogger.com/?p=19

https://affiliatesblog.wordpress.com/2006/06/22/google-finally-launches-their-affiliate-network/

http://affiliateblog.affiliate-guild.com/2006/06/commission_junction_search.html

https://affiliateblogger.wordpress.com/2006/07/25/breaking-free-from-google/

Clearly Google's going after the affiliate market and you affiliates and webmasters who continue to foolishly put 100% blind faith into Google AdWords/AdSense as your sole source of income are in for some rough times ahead.

You should also have a read over Affiliate Classroom's blog entry on surviving this summer block buster as presented by Google.