Posts Tagged Google
Have You Been Google Caffeinated or is it Mayday?
Posted by Kirsty McCubbin in Affiliate Marketing on June 9, 2010
This week Google confirmed that the much speculated upon Caffeine Update has finished and is here to stay. This new search index has been hot gossip around the interweb for quite some time now. There’s some confusion about what current changes are related to Caffeine and which are down to an unrelated algo adjustment over at Google HQ which has been referred to as the “Mayday” update.
With that in mind, I thought I’d do a bit of a post about what’s happening, who it’s happening to, how its impacted me personally and include a bit of wild conjecture about how affiliates will be affected for entertainment value.
So What Is Google Caffeine?
Fortunately Google saw fit to release a concise diagram which explains it all.
Clearly the forecast for Google searchers is cloudy with a chance of cyclonic outbursts of random information and images. Do please use the new index with caution if searching in an enclosed space, or a subject area with sharp edges.
*ahem*
Alternatively it could be that the above indicates that users can now enjoy the following: -
- The new index will be continuously updated, and will deliver fresh content faster than ever. Delays between the time Google finds new content and includes it in the index have been eradicated.
- Google can now index staggering amounts of data, giving them the ability to add more all singing and dancing features to their search engine offerings.
- Real time web here we come!!
Changes to Longtail Search – Caffeine or Mayday?
- Current site ranking changes being experienced by some webmasters aren’t related to Google caffeine. Apparently they’ve just been rolled out together and current traffic changes are just part of one of the many hundreds of updates the big G makes every year. Well, that’s what Matt Cutts said anyhow. So caffeine = quicker search, Mayday = quality adjustments.
- The changes are based around a re-assessment of how the best quality pages to rank for long tail searches are determined.
- Until now, the internal pages of many large sites with good authority were ranked well for long tail searches. We’ve all seen these results in the SERPS and greeted them with a wry “Urgh, these guys have such good authority they can put any old shit up and rank for it”. The changes mean that this authority will now no longer be enough to make Google believe sites are the best quality match to be returned for long tail searches.
- Most likely to be affected are large sites with many internal pages which are buried deep within a site’s structure and which don’t attract much in the way of external links and aren’t terribly well linked to from within the site either. The buzz around internet town is that ecommerce sites are most likely to be affected.
- The pages containing individual products on ecommerce sites fit the above profile and also often do not contain unique content, and may be populated by descriptions and information from manufacturers databases. i.e. duplicate content. There have been lots of reports from hard hit merchants verifying this.
So How Does This Affect Affiliates?
I can only speak for my own sites with any sort of surety, but I seem to have fallen heir to a lot of long tail traffic since the start of May. For example, my mens underwear site has had a 25% increase in traffic and my lingerie site is enjoying a boost of 30%. Some of this is attributable to swimwear and holiday season, but I’m definately seeing a sudden glut of longtail traffic and an increase in the number of search phrases referring traffic to my sites. Happy days for me (touch wood!)
I’d have thought I might fall victim to the “isolated page with poor linkage” syndrome with many of my blog posts, particularly on Lingerie Brands which has had terrible linkage between blog post pages up until about 10 days ago when I finally got the site sorted with a pagination plugin. However, it seems that the unique content on these pages combined with the internal cross linkage from related posts has been enough to give Google a good “quality signal” about my content.
And It’s Really All About The Signals Baby…
I have read nothing about affiliate sites being affected, but I imagine there are a few that could fall victim to the current changes. Sites heavily reliant upon feeds and not adding value through the addition of unique and compelling content could very well be affected. Perhaps voucher code and offer sites that pull in and publish feed based content without any alteration could see a reduction in Google’s willingness to rank their pages well. If you auto generate content, it may well be search engine brown trouser time. And of course, there’ll be the usual outbreak of innocent bystanders who have done absolutely nothing wrong, just to add the appropriate levels of confusion to the mix 
Feed affiliates and those using automated methods to build sites could be on a sticky wicket with this, but I think a lot of affiliates could use these changes to their advantage. If you’re prepared to put in the time and effort to create a well structured, content rich, and unique site you’ll have a much better chance now of getting valuable long tail traffic to your site that was previously being hoovered up by large sites you were unable to compete with.
It’s going to be a bit like dating I reckon. If you can give the right quality signals with your website’s “body language”, there’s every chance Google will hook you up with a red hot love match in the form of some beautiful traffic.
Further Reading
Google Confirms Mayday Update Impacts Longtail - from Searchengineland.
Webmasterworld Disaster Thread – lots of people chat about how their sites have been affected.
Google Sends the Long Tail Screaming for May-Day by Kieran Flanagan
Official Google Blog on caffeine update
This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK
Have You Been Google Caffeinated or is it Mayday?
Bingo Sites Clamp Down On Third Party Link Building Affiliates
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on April 2, 2010
Interesting changes are afoot in the bingo affiliate world with the announcement from two affiliate networks about third party link building. The rule changes have essentially been put into immediate effect by Ignite Bingo, who run Costa Bingo, and Joy of Bingo who are responsible for Wink Bingo and the new site Tasty Bingo.
The gist of the announcement is given below:
As of this date affiliates are not permitted to acquire any links for [Bingo Site] terms from third party sites for the purpose of deep linking to their own [Bingo Site] review and information pages. Any affiliate found to have broken this term from this day onward will have any affiliate commissions withheld. The brand owner has made this move in order to guarantee the quality of reader experience when a user searches for their branded terms in search engines.
As I understand it the sites in question aren’t happy about paying commission to affiliates who perhaps are paying for trademark name links in order to inflate their positions in SERPS. Bingo is a competitive area and ranking for a “brand name”, even in the top few places can be beneficial to an affiliate’s monthly earnings.
In some ways the decision is understandable but the brand doesn’t control Google or how the search results appear or the quality of reader experience. Any brand owner would love the right things in the right order on SERPS but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Perhaps the solution is a better SEO strategy from the brand?
Or if an affiliate is acquiring backlinks through payment then Google should be the ones to deal with it (paid links). Perhaps the fact that some affiliate sites rank for “brand name” (and above it in the case of Tasty Bingo) means that the search engine is happy with the link building processes that have gone on or they feel the site is genuinely worthy of that spot?
This puts the merchant in a bit of a pickle.
Firstly how can they determine what Google ranks and where and really is it up to them to decide who goes where? And secondly how is the acquiring of third party links going to be monitored? Also does acquiring mean getting a free link because someone has read your comments and wants to genuinely link back to you?
Another issue is what if the affiliate says “no” to the terms and switches links to a competitor site in protest (i.e. they rank for Site A but tell their users to go to Site B)?. That possibly raises potential legal issues but the fact is that the affiliate will still be ranking in SERPS for the brand. If they kick off the affiliate will they have more problems to deal with? If they don’t take action are they paying out commission they don’t feel they should be to an affiliate who perhaps isn’t working with them in partnership or “adding value”?
The eventual result will be a bit of a shake up in the bingo affiliate arena.
One merchant unveiling the new terms seemed to me to be a “reaction”, but a second following 24 hours later suggests that this issue is going to transcend across more brands over the coming weeks and months.
I’d expect many operators to now extend their own SEO and link building work so as to outrank affiliates under brand terms and generics, something which many are already trying to do. This no doubt costs them money and perhaps that will mean commissions will be cut to accommodate? It could well be that some operators start to become a bit more selective about who they work with, especially when it comes to their own independent networks.
It’ll be interesting to see if these term changes have any impact on SERPS, affiliate/merchant relationships and which bingo operators affiliates work with over the coming months.
Personally I sympathise with the bingo brands, but don’t think the strategy employed is really going to change anything. Monitoring and proving if an affiliate has acquired links is going to be difficult. Even if you ask affiliates to stop doing something they will try and find ways around it. That said affiliates paying for links run the risk of eventually being caught out so perhaps natural equilibrium will eventually win through?
Bingo Sites Clamp Down On Third Party Link Building Affiliates
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on April 2, 2010
Interesting changes are afoot in the bingo affiliate world with the announcement from two affiliate networks about third party link building. The rule changes have essentially been put into immediate effect by Ignite Bingo, who run Costa Bingo, and Joy of Bingo who are responsible for Wink Bingo and the new site Tasty Bingo.
The gist of the announcement is given below:
As of this date affiliates are not permitted to acquire any links for [Bingo Site] terms from third party sites for the purpose of deep linking to their own [Bingo Site] review and information pages. Any affiliate found to have broken this term from this day onward will have any affiliate commissions withheld. The brand owner has made this move in order to guarantee the quality of reader experience when a user searches for their branded terms in search engines.
As I understand it the sites in question aren’t happy about paying commission to affiliates who perhaps are paying for trademark name links in order to inflate their positions in SERPS. Bingo is a competitive area and ranking for a “brand name”, even in the top few places can be beneficial to an affiliate’s monthly earnings.
In some ways the decision is understandable but the brand doesn’t control Google or how the search results appear or the quality of reader experience. Any brand owner would love the right things in the right order on SERPS but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Perhaps the solution is a better SEO strategy from the brand?
Or if an affiliate is acquiring backlinks through payment then Google should be the ones to deal with it (paid links). Perhaps the fact that some affiliate sites rank for “brand name” (and above it in the case of Tasty Bingo) means that the search engine is happy with the link building processes that have gone on or they feel the site is genuinely worthy of that spot?
This puts the merchant in a bit of a pickle.
Firstly how can they determine what Google ranks and where and really is it up to them to decide who goes where? And secondly how is the acquiring of third party links going to be monitored? Also does acquiring mean getting a free link because someone has read your comments and wants to genuinely link back to you?
Another issue is what if the affiliate says “no” to the terms and switches links to a competitor site in protest (i.e. they rank for Site A but tell their users to go to Site B)?. That possibly raises potential legal issues but the fact is that the affiliate will still be ranking in SERPS for the brand. If they kick off the affiliate will they have more problems to deal with? If they don’t take action are they paying out commission they don’t feel they should be to an affiliate who perhaps isn’t working with them in partnership or “adding value”?
The eventual result will be a bit of a shake up in the bingo affiliate arena.
One merchant unveiling the new terms seemed to me to be a “reaction”, but a second following 24 hours later suggests that this issue is going to transcend across more brands over the coming weeks and months.
I’d expect many operators to now extend their own SEO and link building work so as to outrank affiliates under brand terms and generics, something which many are already trying to do. This no doubt costs them money and perhaps that will mean commissions will be cut to accommodate? It could well be that some operators start to become a bit more selective about who they work with, especially when it comes to their own independent networks.
It’ll be interesting to see if these term changes have any impact on SERPS, affiliate/merchant relationships and which bingo operators affiliates work with over the coming months.
Personally I sympathise with the bingo brands, but don’t think the strategy employed is really going to change anything. Monitoring and proving if an affiliate has acquired links is going to be difficult. Even if you ask affiliates to stop doing something they will try and find ways around it. That said affiliates paying for links run the risk of eventually being caught out so perhaps natural equilibrium will eventually win through?