Is Affiliate Marketing Dead On Google AdWords?

***Update: I found a couple of videos on this topic just put out by Clickbank a couple of days ago. I’ve added them to the bottom of this post

affiliate marketing google dead I had a successful ad/landing page combination running on AdWords for the better part of two years only to have my landing page’s Quality Score (QS) lowered to 1 last week.

Your landing page’s QualityScore determine’s in large part where your AdWords ad will display relative to your competitors and how much Google will charge per click. The higher your QualityScore the better (it ranges from 1 to 10). If your QS drops to 2 or below, your ad may not show at all.

When I emailed AdWords support to find out what was going on, they replied that my landing page was deemed to be a “bridging page” and as such, was not allowed.

The format for my page was the following:

Headline and Offer
Product Image
Testimonial
Product Options (with links)
Included Bonuses (with purchase)
Opt-in box with more bonuses for opting in and some copy

As you can see, my page had little by way of text- maybe about 350 words total. The keywords selected for my AdWords account were “buyer” keywords- so there was no need for a review or any persuasion on my landing pages.

According to Google, this was a bridging page because its sole purpose was to get the visitor to click through to the vendor.

I re-designed the landing page- updated the look and feel and published it as a WordPress blog post. The landing page was now part of a site with links to product reviews and competing products- even purchase options such as Amazon instead of just my affiliate links. I kept the landing page format the same otherwise.

This is what Google told me next:

Thank you for your continued patience. I understand you made a few changes to your landing page per our suggestions. However, I checked your website with our Specialist and confirmed that your website continues to serve as a bridge page. Upon clicking on certain links on your website, the user still needs to go to another website to buy your product. Please understand that in order to be compliant per our landing page guidelines, you need to promote your product on your website and the user need not go to another website to buy the product.

Is That It? The End Of Affiliate Landing Pages For AdWords?

Determined to get my little cashcow back into production, I transitioned my landing page to a review page with the new addition of a video and about 500 words of text. The affiliate links were changed from buttons to lessobvious text links.

I recontacted AdWords support for a re-evaluation of my landing page.

This is what they said:

Thank you for your email. I have checked with our specialist team regarding your new URL, and would like to inform you that it is still bridging. This means that you need to ensure that users do not go to other sites from your website.

Excuse me? I need to “ensure that users do not go to other sites?”

Is it just me, or is this a ridiculous requirement?

I just had to get input from other PPC warriors so I posted my experience in a well known forum.

Suffice it to say, there’s plenty of controversy on the topic. My post has garnered over 2,000 views and 50 responses in just a few days. It seems I’m not the only one grappling with Google’s deliberately obfuscated landing page policies.

You see, they can’t disclose the full details of how they calculate your landing page’s quality score for fear clever marketers will find loopholes to game their system. This has everyone guessing how best to deal with the situation.

With Bridging Pages Out And Even Review Pages Being Knocked Down By Google, What Can The Affiliate Marketer Do?

Here are just some of the ideas put forth in the discussion forum:

Move to other traffic sources such as FaceBook, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
Place more emphasis on SEO and linkbuilding
Place more emphasis on list building
Build deep sites with lots of content and value and maybe, just maybe Google will overlook your affiliate links (and you might want to cloak them)
Build an e-commerce site so you manage the purchases and the customers never leave your site

Perry Marshall received a communique from Glenn Livingston recently about lots of affiliates having their AdWords campaigns shut down by the “Google Slap” recently (QS being lowered to 1). Perry and Glenn are two of the best known PPC gurus in the Internet marketing industry. You can read about it on Perry’s blog post .

Perry’s recommendation is to:

Build a deep site with lots of value
Get newsletter opt-ins
Use autoresponder messages to sell
Promote a webinar and close sales there

Uhm, OK. I’ll get right on that.

All facetiousness aside, I may actually go to all that trouble for a product with a high payout and lots of traffic; However, the amount of labor required for affiliate marketing following this model effectively shuts out not just many affiliate marketers with limited time or expertise, but also many vendors with low- margin products or slow markets that used to have hordes of “free” labor at their disposal in the form of affiliate marketers.

The Future

What the market needs now is healthy competition for Google from Yahoo and Bing. With their more affiliate friendly landing page policies, Google would have to reconsider it’s heavy-handed approach.

I’m sure a reasonable compromise will eventually be reached that ensures quality experiences for customers searching the web while still allowing part-time marketers to participate in the virtual economy.