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It's funny... Google Adwords is all about providing a good user experience. You need a good "quality score" and other factors so that you will be allowed to advertise on their system.
Because of this, google has been terminating affiliate account after affiliate account. They've made it quite clear they don't really want affiliates running on Adwords.
That's why this morning when I Google searched "affiliate marketing," I had to chuckle to myself when I saw an Adwords ad advertising Adwords.
To me this seems like a bad user experience and they should slap themselves for advertising to people they don't want as advertisers. 
Nice! This type of thing makes for a very confusing relationship eh
Google keeps attacking good business people that have built Google. This same ignorant attitude for their Adsense program.
My goodness what a scam adsense is. You write content forever basically working for google to make $0.15 cents a day from their clicks.
Than they got the nerve to arbitrarily split the payout the way they choose.
Classic!
I love seeing all the arbitrage sites, like Ask.com, Webcrawler, and the really bad arbitragers too.
Also, I installed a malicious fake virus protection scam from a Google banner on Xmas day.
Hey Jony,
Definetely!
Matt Cuts will probably respond as I DM’d this link to him today.
Even Google messes up sometimes, I know I was Senior Tech. PM inside for three months on a video upgrade project in 2008.
Let’s start our own search engine, how much would it cost?
Respectfully,
Nicholas ‘Chase – ‘erstwhile Affiliate Marketer’ and Producer / Director / Engineer
Hehehe well… Microsoft tried to start a search engine and it only cost them $100 MM in marketing costs to get a few percent of the market share. So I think that’s a bit out of the budget.
Thanks for the DM.
I’ve been using Adwords for 16 months and two months ago I was dropped because my landing page scored too low. Wtf??? I didn’t change anything or do anything to my site. Why the change?
you got dropped because you didnt do anything to your site. google looks for changes!!!
As a small time ffiliate I was pissed when I got the ban. I didn’t think I was breaking any rules.
Funny loool … you know Google loves affiliate marketers … they simply don’t love all of them… and they who they are….:-) Hint: Google cash kit, and any other edgy offer…..
Happy new year
Google can go die. I was banned and ended up much more without them, so it was blessing in diguise. I lost all feeling for advertising on Google, they jut don’t exist to me any longer.
I make great money without them, no QS bull. I can direct link and I don’t need to “update” my site to keep it fresh to make Google happy, while they made my life HELL…
Bunch of A-Holes…………. It WILL bite them in the ass, lol
Now that is funny!
This one made me laugh. Too bad. That’s what you call Karma.
If Google needs any help slapping themselves, I don’t mind lending a hand.
Hehe – Yea, it’s crazy just how many LEGIT affiliates are upset at the way google runs now. Only time will tell how it will turn out.
They got my two hands for sure on that one. Google can really keep you happy, but they can really upset you for no reason on your end.
I got banned a couple weeks after joining. I missed the part about using frames… Then I asked them why it happened because I wanted to correct my mistake, and they wouldn’t tell me. Lost all respect for G
NICE ONE!
Hey Jon do you know if google is only after those affiliates who have intentionally tried to cloak and sling rebills and ringtone offers or are they against all affiliates including those who run with offers like Blue Nile and other more straight and narrow affiliate offers too.
Did the rebill affiliates plant a bad taste for all affiliates in general in googles mouth?
I can’t imagine they would advertise adwords to affiliates and not still take in those merchant affiliates.
Its really funny and i think you are right jonathan as you saif time will tell now what will turn out.
Bare in mind though, with the large migration from straight search to social media and new advertising platforms becoming available that will happily allow affiliates to advertise with I think we’ll definitely see a much larger portion of affiliates moving away and finding different platforms because of Google’s far too tight advertising policies. However at the same time it does put a large portion of the search market out of reach. Jonathon, you’re obviously a big spender with G, perhaps you could tell us if they’re a little more lenient towards those with bigger pockets? I wonder what proportion of advertisers are affiliates as 98% of Google’s revenue is generated from advertising and I read somewhere that affiliate marketing is a 250 Billion dollar a year industry. Just a thought, Yousef
.
While some might say otherwise, I would say they are a bit more lenient to big spenders as long as you have a history of running non-spammy campaigns.
redonkulous
Google is not only slapping affiliates. They slap my ads all the time. Have me scared to do any testing and we have a legitimate product oriented site. Why they be so mean?!
They’ve come a long way from those nickel clicks….
Agreed… Ad testing with Google is like playing Russian Roulette
The Magic is gone at Google. Google is now my nemesis. Google may not be intentionally evil, but they are getting too dam big. Everyone should send a complaint letter to the FTC to block the AdMob.com deal http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/contact.shtm
Google should ban them self’s =)
I don’t get Google at all. If they were so concerned about the evils of affiliate marketing, then why did they buy performics for their own aff network. Are all their affiliates providing that quality user experience they talk about?
I can tell you first-hand that is a big fat “no”. They just want the cash instead of losing a piece of the pie & love how they have snowed most of the non-profit or cog-in-the-machine participants in the web into thinking they are somehow benevolent.
i’m never surprised by the things google does anymore they are like most businesses very self serving in nature.
love or hate google they are a necessary beast in most of our businesses. i know most my income comes from google, wish it didn’t
i’m working on making my business not rely on google for income but it’s a tough goal to accomplish
Strangely enough http://www.google.com/support/affiliatenetwork/advertiser/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107629 lists search “specialists” and all the good things about the search affiliate business model.
Wonder is all their affiliates are “specializing” on Bing?
Google bought Performics, and they have years of affiliate campaign data (thanks to you). Why do they need you when they can just get programs from their own network and run them on Adwords using your data? Google sucks, plain and simple. If you havent been banned yet you will. In 2007 I spent $1.1m with them, 2008 $1.9m, 2009 I got banned. I’m not even running crappy rebill products, never have, never will.
Bummer man! That’s pretty rough!
Ok pause guys….Now I need to understand something… what type of offers you push and what type of landing page you have… I still think that google banned people with crap offers and crap landing pages…. Does your landing page looks more like a page or like a real website… it seems that google love real website over single crappy page… does your “landing page” has a proper term of service, privacy policy, real contact information… does it look like a serious website….
In my personal opinion even thought you run over bing or yahoo or others … they will increase their rules too in a near future……
PS: Happy new year guys may god bless you all .. And yes you can live with out google… that’s why media buy exist….
Very interesting observation Jon! This has actually happened to me quite a few times for different search terms.
Regards, Dave
I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this banning Adwords users stuff yet. I’m guessing somewhere down the line they’re going to reinstate several accounts when they realize what a stupid mistake they’ve made and this whole thing comes back to bite their a*s.
Hey, nice find!
Google’s behaviour with the adwords accounts is quite puzzling. I wonder where this is going to lead…
Google is just like any other type of business. They want to make money and as much as they can.
Google definitely makes some questionable moves about how they deal with certain problems. Often times they choose the quickest solution that creates the least customer service work for them. It makes sense that Google wants to improve all sites listed in search results including paid results. It just isn’t right that they are so heavy handed about it.
Well look at it this way they are going to eliminate all of the little affiliates and leave just a few super affiliates with accounts. Google is just trying to push out the middle men, They can make more profit on Advertisers that don’t know what they are doing vs. affiliates.
it interesting to see that Amish is seling a new product where he shows a successful google campaign that runs now.
seems his new product is for complete newbs with some budget (to blow it off quickly
) who are still believe in magic soft and the world of online marketing is willing to share some money with them – as for me, google killed my whole biz, shutting down my good old seo site (september) and then (in december) my adwords acc. and killing ALL my money streams.
this monster don’t even think of how many people are left with NOTHING because of them, I mean not only get rich fantasies, but NOTHING even to bay bills and buy food.
Ugh google – don’t get me started!
You can’t make Google change their opinion about your site in this case. changing the domain name and start over, or look to other ways to generate traffic to your site are the best ways.
Great post. It’s not easy to open a small business. Most small business fail (statistically). I lost a lot of money trying to open a website.
That is too funny, they are advertising adwords on a term that don’t want people to advertise on. They should try fixing that so people don’t sign up for it.
I have $4K month profitable adwords campaign running for 2 years… even after several changes and slaps my QS remains the same 10/10! I’m promoting affiliate product with my own landing page.
Google banned affiliates who promoted Free trial scams…. you free trial scammers really deserve the BAN!
They should slap themselves for other reasons as well lol like twitter realtime search results showing curse words as usernames. =/