Associate Programs Newsletter #361
Here’s an update on what Google thinks of “thin affiliates” and so-called “sneaky redirects”.
A 45-page Quality Rating Guidelines report has been leaked which gives affiliates solid tips on things they can do to avoid annoying Google.
And a lot more…
CONTENTS:
1. Google’s updated Quality Rating guidelines
2. How to recruit, motivate and manage your affiliates
3. Where in the world SpeedPPC customers live
4. It’s our 10th birthday – generous prizes
5. How to get a FREE copy of SpeedPPC
6. Are you new to affiliate programs?
7. Thought for today: Catching lions
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1. Google’s updated Quality Rating guidelines
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Back in 2005, a leaked Google report – Thin affiliates – told us that Google regarded “thin affiliates” as offensive. Thin affiliates provide affiliate links without adding any useful content.
Google has “quality raters” who evaluate web pages. Google uses their research to help it make its algorithms more effective.
Quality raters have the options of rating pages as…
Vital
Useful
Relevant
Not Relevant
Off-Topic
Not Spam
Maybe Spam
Spam
Now a more detailed, 45-page, up-to-date Google report has been leaked. It provides updated guidelines for Google’s Quality Raters.
Section 4 of the report, starting on page 32, discusses “Webspam”. Google says these are pages designed by webmasters to trick search engine robots and direct traffic to their websites.
Pages generally should NOT be marked Spam if they provide added value. Examples of content that provides added value include:
* Price comparison functionality.
* Product reviews.
* Recipes.
* Lyrics and quotes.
* Contact information, especially physical addresses and phone numbers.
* Coupon, discount and promotion codes.
You may still be able to find the Quality Rater Guidelines online here…
https://www.mauriziopetrone.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/quality-rater-guidelines-2007.pdf
If you’re in a hurry and worried that you may be doing something wrong, start reading at page 32.
Google gives several pages of examples of what it regards as Webspam. They include fake message boards, fake blogs, fake directories, parked domains, sneaky redirects, keyword stuffing, hidden text, and hidden links. Google explains how to switch off Javascript to see if it is being used to hide text. Horizontal lines or bars can also hide text. Google also knows that CSS can be used hide text.
Spam can also involve scraped content from such sources as Wikipedia, DMOZ and RSS news feeds, combined with PPC ads.
“The important thing to remember,” Google says, “is that if the scraped (copied) content is removed and all that remains is ads, it is Spam.”
An example is given of keyword stuffing in an URL. The example has three hyphens in a sub-domain, like this…
“https://apply-bankruptcy-card-credit.luciddomains.com/index.html“
I couldn’t find any mention of keyword stuffing in a domain name. (However, the report mentions a Rating Hub which Quality Raters are advised to study for many more Webspam examples. So this leaked report is certainly not telling us the full story.)
Google gives an example of a “thin affiliate” – a page containing no useful information – and explains that not all affiliates are “thin”.
“For example, if the affiliate offers price comparison functionality, or displays product reviews, recipes, lyrics, etc., it is not a thin affiliate and, therefore, not Spam.”
However, there’s a rather alarming section on “sneaky redirects” which gives an example of a Commission Junction link which redirects to an affiliate vendor, J.C. Whitney and Co.
If a whois search shows that the two domains involved in the redirect are owned by different people, it is “probably Spam”, Google says.
So what the affiliate marketing industry regards as a perfectly legitimate affiliate redirect, Google labels “sneaky” and “probably Spam”. That seems ludicrous to me.
Fortunately, if you’re sensible enough to be providing useful, original content, your pages should be regarded as OK.
Are you wondering if any of your pages qualify as “Webspam”? Here’s the test…
“If I remove the copied content, scraped news feeds, fake forums and blogs, thin affiliate links, parked/expired domain links, and all that is left are PPC ads and sponsored links, the page is probably spam.”
By the way, if you think this leaked report was faked, you could apply for a job as a Quality Rater and find out. You’ll need a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent and other skills. Here’s where you can apply:
https://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/topic.py?dep_id=1094&loc_id=1628
https://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54183
Of course, what I’m wondering is whether this report was deliberately leaked by someone in Google who actually wants to educate us.
I was tipped off about this report by Stephen Mahaney and his team. Their “Unfair Advantage” book on search engine marketing is updated every month. I’ve been an enthusiastic subscriber for several years, because it’s THE go-to place for solid advice on what the search engines are doing.
Get the “Unfair Advantage” here…
https://www.associateprograms.com/unfair
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2. How to recruit, motivate and manage your affiliates
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Neil Durrant, Shawn Collins and Anik Singal have all written good books or courses on how to create and run an affiliate program. However, affiliate marketing has moved on and those products are all either out of date or off the market.
Now at last there’s a really good, up-to-date course for affiliate managers which IS available.
It’s Sales Army Secrets, in which Jimmy D. Brown, a highly successful affiliate vendor, describes how to recruit, motivate and manage affiliates. It includes a description of 20 ways to recruit affiliates, a heap of really good tips on how to help and motivate them, and an in-depth interview with Jimmy’s affiliate manager. It’s superb value, written by a guy who is really good at this stuff.
This is the new MUST-HAVE book for all affiliate managers.
If you’re an affiliate manager, just get it. End of story.
Get it here:
https://www.associateprograms.com/sales-army
Read my review here:
Sales Army Secrets review
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3. Where in the world SpeedPPC customers live
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While we’re preparing for the launch of Version 3.0 of SpeedPPC, Jay has created a map which shows you all the places in the world where our SpeedPPC customers live.
It’s a dynamic map (using Google Maps).
https://www.SpeedPPC.com/customer_map.php
Jay, who invented SpeedPPC, thinks it’s “pretty cool”, and so do I. We live way down under in one corner of the world, but our customers are spread all over… Santiago, Laredo, Lagos, Larksville, Budapest, Barcelona, Hamburg, Rybinsk, Dublin, Paris, Cape Town, Melbourne, Timaru, Whangarei.. and all sorts of places I’d never heard of before.
Give it a few seconds to load and you’ll see. You can navigate around and zoom in on locations all over the globe.
Has anyone from your town bought SpeedPPC? Zoom in and have a look.
Just a reminder… If you want to be in on the launch of SpeedPPC 3.0, sign up now…
SpeedPPC affiliate program
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4. It’s our 10th birthday – generous prizes
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We’ve been so busy with the planned launch of SpeedPPC 3.0 that we almost forgot…
The Associate Programs Newsletter will be 10 years old tomorrow.
Instead of making a lot of fuss about this, we are going to give away ridiculously generous prizes to our affiliates for the first 7 days of the launch of SpeedPPC 3.0.
Every – yes, EVERY – affiliate who makes a sale in the first 7 days of the launch will win a prize.
You can feel confident promoting SpeedPPC. After 10 years, I hope you know me well enough to appreciate that our own product just has to be SERIOUSLY GOOD. And the latest version is hugely improved, with user-requested new features and 10 new instruction videos. It includes some nice surprises for anyone who does PPC marketing.
Sign up as an affiliate and you’ll get all the details.
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5. How to get a FREE copy of SpeedPPC
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But that’s not all…
Now we’re REALLY celebrating our 10th anniversary…
Have you thought of getting SpeedPPC but were put off by the price? We understand. It’s a very high quality product and comes with a price tag to suit, which puts some people off.
For anyone who doesn’t know, SpeedPPC is an incredibly faster, more efficient system of doing PPC marketing. Here’s how one SpeedPPC user described it..
“…what an elegant and sublimely white-hat solution it offered to the dilemma all full-time PPC affiliate marketers face: Quality Score / Relevancy vs. Time & Resources. Anyone with a good grasp of AdWords and even passing understanding of landing pages and scripts will ‘get it’ and see that SpeedPPC offers a previously unattainable capability and nearly insurmountable competitive advantages. I bought it, installed it immediately, and have been happily kicking butt since.”
Note: That was written about the CURRENT version. Now we’ve made it even better.
All you have to do to qualify for a FREE copy is be an affiliate and sell just ONE copy of the new SpeedPPC 3.0, which is launching very soon.
Happy birthday. Enjoy.
Join. Do it now…
SpeedPPC affiliate program
P.S. Why would we give you a copy? Because we know if you own SpeedPPC and use it, you can honestly describe your own experience with it. This will make you a much more effective affiliate. All you have to do to qualify is sell ONE copy during the 7-day launch. And we’ll pay you a 50% commission, too.
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6. Are you new to affiliate programs?
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If you’re new to affiliate programs and affiliate marketing, here’s the place to start on our site…
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7. Thought for today: Catching lions
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“No lions are ever caught in mousetraps. To catch lions you must think in terms of lions, not in terms of mice. Your mind is always creating traps of one kind or another, and what you catch depends on the thinking you do. It is your thinking that attracts to you what you receive.” – Gil Bailie.
All the best
Allan Gardyne