Is Google Panda going to kill affiliate marketing and the adult affiliate model?
 

Like a lot of people I've been whacked by Google this week, both my adult and mainstream blogs.

The logic behind Panda is quite simple. Google derives its income from their Adwords system. Therefore they have no interest in having sites that sell things at the top of organic search results, competing with their Adwords. In their world - if visitors want to buy things, then they should click on a Google adword, and if advertisers (inc. affiliates) want to sell things, they should pay to advertise on Google Adwords.

The whole idea of affiliate marketing is to get to the top of Google, and to get the search engine visitors to a sponsors site as quickly as possible. The successful affiliate marketer is now going to be penalised by Google.

The motivational logic might not apply to adult affiliate marketing, but the Google algorithm for adult is pretty much the same as for mainstream.

Affiliate marketing in its current form is pretty much dead from this point. The adult affiliate industry in any cost effective form is likely about to die. It was hard enough before competing with the tubes and the forums, now it's going to become impossible.

All of my blogs have survived the Google Panda updates, some lose traffic drastically for a few days but then it all comes back with even MORE traffic. It's way to soon to say Google Panda is hurting websites, wait a few months and see how everything turns out.

This actually makes sense.

It is unfortunate that a lot of us truly rely on Google for the majority of our income.

So many small mom and pop business have been put out of business with their crazy algorithm changes over the years. I always felt bad for them but was always content with my own sites.

Playing by the rules and having good content sites I have made a killing from SEO. Now I am starting to see the effects of this as well (small at the moment, but I imagine it will worsen).

I have had sites dinged this week that have never budged from their #1 spot since I launched them (the main one in question is 4-5 years old and held #1 for the last 4+ years - yes it is adult related).

Everyone has been bashing this whole "Panda" thing for months and I didn't take much notice because it wasn't effecting me at the time, if anything it was helping my traffic in most aspects. But going from the #1 spot to anywhere else is an instant drop in a large percentage of my traffic for that keyword. Seeing it effect one of my most stable websites is an eye opener.

But as with anything in the online marketplace, things are always changing at a fast pace, and to stay ahead of the game you have to constantly change/adapt your strategies and pick up new techniques along the way to make up for lost profits.

I knew things would go sour at some point, just didn't think so early. Really though it is still too early to tell the overall effects of all of this. Some sites will disappear while others will prosper like never before.

While it isn't the end of the world (yet), imo this is the start to the affiliate demise (in the current SEO sense).

I agree that it has been tough enough in the past few years, now it is going to become far worse.

Those who are smart will remain in the game though.

:2 cents:

Threads like these make me realize how much people still do not understand the social network thing and how it is changing the internet.

I haven't felt any effects of panda either. Could be cause I have 100% original content, don't spam link, buy links or use softwares for exposure.

google "porn." what kind of sites are there? there is also a clue that what kind of sites panda likes idiot.

:2 cents:

I'll say "NO"

affiliate marketing isn't dead, just our old SEO tactics

I made this argument almost a decade ago when google came out with a popup blocker.
It was their first step in limiting the competition.

Anyone remember getting $3.00 cpm on 90% of your visitors?

Google should be the face of anti-trust

how low can it go?

will the affiliate model turn into that affiliates have to pay surfers to join paysites?

Google just loves to fuck everyone over and control absolutely everything... They're latest move to having anyone logged into their google account get a secure search instead of the regular one is proof of that... No more seeing what search terms etc. the visitor used to get to your site forcing you to use their webmaster tools if you want that data.

I just checked my mainstream sites... $8.41 for cpm. How do you like them apples Ronnie? :1orglaugh

If you weren't so caught up in being a perverted little porn dick... you too... could have done ok.

seobook.com/blog covers this issue pretty well.

Said 90% of your traffic.

I'm sure your 6 month's check for $8.41 makes you proud but never think anyone else is impressed.

That is my average over the past month. What I don't understand is how people pay $1, $2+ per click... it amazes me.

I guess the reason is I built solid sites that are valuable and people like... unlike your shit stain of a collection :1orglaugh:thumbsup

You should be proud.
Now run into the other room and tell your mom all about your success:1orglaugh

No the model has been dead for a long time.
The panda is not to blame

I will do that...

$3.00 for a 1000 visitors?
Not very impressive at all

I have had domains earn over $70 CPM with skenzo well after pop up blockers were around

Imagine how Hotwire, Expeida, Priceline feel now that gargoyle bought ITA Software (the main travel software for all these sites).....

#1 result for this in ixquick search engine:
http://www.petergreenberg.com/2010/0...nline-booking/

You part timers posting at night explaining the business to me crack me up.
Please son, run of site, completely untargetted with buyers happy to take it.

I understand that your 5 ultra targeted visitors make you a $70.00 cpm but please get back to me in '15 when you finally reach the $25 minimum to collect your check.:1orglaugh

You shouldn't be relying so much on Google in the first place. You should have other marketing efforts in place so that even if Google hurts you it will still be possible to thrive. Diversify.

I sympathize with you. Really, I do. However, two words sum up your line of thinking: false dichotomy. There is no EITHER OR CHOICE. Google has made it a point over and over again that its main loyalty is to its user base. This means quality search results. This also means quality adword ads. Remember, all the bellyaching because Google's Quality Score system put the kibosh on all those instant milionaires pimping Google Adsense Arbitrage a few years back? Big G was willing to leave money on the table all in the spirit of a better "quality experience" for its users.

Panda is just the latest manifestation of this ongoing quality campaign. Frankly, I think it isnt working. There are many #1 results in the niches I cover that are off category/not real quality results. Still, you can see that they are TRYING.

I quoted part of your original post above because it highlights the FALSE DICHOTOMY. Affiliates' interests and loyalty is to themselves. Sure, some may use quality original content to reach their objectives. Others would prefer to use spun crap or glorified Circle Jerk methods.

If anything, Google's recent moves are making affiliates move past the FALSE DICHOTOMY of Google's way or My way and more towards "How can I best serve my target market?" Maybe instead of focusing on how people can get one over Google, they should look at its professed mission to serve content consumers and ALIGN THEIR INTERESTS with that mission. If this is the case, the affiliate model isn't going anywhere. You would have become a collaborator in adding real value to the Internet instead of one in millions trying to hatch ways of diverting some of that yummy traffic through blog farms/autoblogs/cookiecutter tube CJ sites and many other common methods that are now facing the wrath of the Panda and its upgrades.

The bottomline is quality will always win out. I remember in 2001 a big brouhaha here over Traffic versus Content. Now we're back to content :) If you think Social media marketing is the Magic Bullet out of this conundrum, think again - retweets on Twitter and viral explosions on Facebook are propelled in part by QUALITY CONTENT.

If anyone needs quality mainstream content, hit me up at [email protected] :)

Commission Junction affiliate link URLs are "sneaky redirects" according to the leaked Google Quality Raters Guidelines document. Make of that what you will.

heard that. got a link to the doc?

:eyecrazy

Free market. Less government interference!

Just playing, I agree.

Part of me wonders if they sense shit hitting the fan for them soon so they're just being as greedy as possible? Companies have been broken up for much less than what Google is doing.

there is some odd stuff going on with panda this year. like the fact that the first two pages for every big adult term has been frozen with the same ranks and sites all year. some other stuff i noticed but don't want to tip my hat about. weird ....

^
the truth behind the little sig button i been flying since panda first sat on us.

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

That isn't always the answer though ... here is a weird example I have of my own:

I have a tube that has videos and keywords. Nothing more. It has increased in rankings.

I have another tube where I carefully wrote good descriptions without keyword spamming. It lost rankings.

It's things like that which leave me scratching my head. I thought unique content was good? Tube A is way less unique than tube B yet it is outperforming it!

plenty of site with unique content got ass raped this year and are unable to regain their rankings. and also some people with shit autoblogs and scraped content have seen their ranks increase.

gene is just cloudying the waters by spamming his services again. what is going on is more complex than just adding unique content.

With all due respect gramps. Please do some research on what traffic was required to get a skenzo account.

Got to run now. .Shift starts at wendys in 2min..

"the answer" now is more vague (to us) than ever. only google knows whats really up but all of their responses to panda have been about user experience and satisfaction. so something about your site that gained rankings may be what goog is judging to be a better user experience. keywords or the lack thereof may not be the deciding factor between those two examples - unless they are in all other ways identical

but even then... google has been tweaking and rolling out these changes frequently. i believe they said the new panda results weren't gonna settle for a couple of months? so everything is shaken up now, could be your site that's winning today may be losing in a few months (knock on wood :winkwink: )

There's a lot of misinformation on this thread. In my opinion the Panda update is more about time spent on site, returning visitors vs. first time, and social juice.

That being said, the point of an affiliate site (in the past) was to get someone on it and off it (hopefully via and affiliate link) as fast as possible. In that sense, I agree with a lot of the sentiments here, but I doubt it has much to do with weather you are using adwords or not.

Get back to me when you send them 5 mil impressions a day and let me know what your cpm is then, kid.

I agree.

I agree 100%
Time on site and repeat is what all my sites that took huge dive did not have

In parked domain traffic? I wish

Exactly.
See post 24