Is Google At War With Affiliate Marketing
Is Google At War With Affiliate Marketing?
I seem to be at war with google at the moment, My google ads were suspended (despite using the same ads for over one year) because the ads contain circumventing which they are not.
Circumventing - to find an unusual way around something that hides its true purpose and is not transparent about its actions.
I telephoned google and on further questioning of the google representative, I asked them to identify the domain in question and was informed that it wasn’t as easy as that, I replied if your customers are in violation of any ads you must be able to identify why they are in violation since that is what you are telling your customers through email, although in my case I was speaking to a representative in India.
When you telephone the google helpline you normally get through to a woman, these women are based in the philippines and are only a front desk operation, they book you in to speak to a google specialist who is normally a google certified online certificated specialist that anyone can obtain and are normally male and based in India.
Both the operatives in the Philippines and India are not directly employed by google because the services are outsourced to other countries.
I have being conducting research by reading articles/blogs in Wealthy Affiliate and other news forums online who have mentioned that since the middle of September 2023 the traffic to their websites has decreased DRAMATICALLY, I corresponded with some of the article writers in various forums who identified that they ALL have affiliate links contained in their websites.
I also read that google AND Bing, seem to be against affiliate links being used in websites, since when!?
Affiliate links are good for business and internet traffic, why is Google At War With Affiliate Marketing?
What has been your experience regarding google, otherwise known as go-ogle because they like to look at and store your data.
Watch here, a link on YOUTUBE of a series that used to be on UK television in the 70’s titled The Prisoner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhveNJZnfx4 which suggests that google just want your data, back then before the days of the internet we didn't understand what the series was about, fast forward to the year 2023, and everything that has happened in the series "The Prisoner" is actually coming true.
So, if your ads have been suspended and/or your internet traffic has decreased on your website, the reason is that affiliate links seem to be taking a bashing at the moment from google.
What has been your experience with google?
Regards
Brian
Recent Comments
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I disagree with your idea that Google is at war with affiliate links.
Brian, if it were at war, all of us who have a website with affiliate links would never rank in the SERPs. Ever!
I know one thing for sure: Google is at war with spamming sites. The Spam October 2023 Update rolled around yesterday, tackling websites with terrible auto-generated spammy links. It does talk about other languages, but I am sure it will be in all languages.
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/10/october-2023-spam-update
I have done affiliate links with PPC ads. I did not have them suspended. I just paused my account because It was getting too expensive for me to run. Vitaliy has used Google ads for many years. I suggest you talk to him, he is an expert with Google ads. He even trained us P Plus members about it. He has been able to navigate Google very well. Talk to him; his profile
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/vitaliyg/profile
Hi Brenda,
I have been running google ads for over one year, I do various ads, smart campaigns, search campaigns and shop campaigns.
It seems to be an automated problem, as I said above in my post, the "google Specialist" could not identify the ad or the domain that was causing the algorithm issue, so my account was suspended.
I have written on various forums, where other people have had problems with views and rankings, since the second week of September 2023, that was three weeks ago.
Go to your back office and look at your own viewings on your websites and let me know here how many views it has dropped since the second week of September 2023, you wont be exempt from the changes.
I will check out the links that you have provided, thanks.
Regards
Brian
I am aware of what you stated. I know many have lost traffic due to the September 2023 core update. It affects all people. I never said I was not exempt. No one is, and I do not think it has anything to do with affiliate links. Those who did not use affiliate links, just a tiny business promoting digital marketing, also lost traffic. A company that deals with physical products also lost traffic. Everyone did. Google granted most of the ranking to this SM thing, like Quora, Medium, LinkedIn, and others. Now we get to be hit with another spam update. We all get a beating now and then with Google. It does sound like the system messed up, Google does not seem to know what it is doing.
I remember having to watch that show for a school class. I thought it was so strange and was glad it was fiction back then. Scary how things like that foreshadowed our future. Wonder how they knew. Big G is one fickle beast.
Susan
I concur with much of what you are saying, Brian! They do this all in the name of change and better user functionality, but I feel it is a just a money grab!
Jeff
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I don't know what or who Google is at war with Brian. My site started losing traffic in the 2022 update and continued on a downward spiral to Zero traffic back in June, with most of my posts becoming no-index as if by magic.
Answers were hard to come by, was it the theme, the layout of the site, the SEO plugin, other plugins, the categories, the tags?
So, I set about deleting a stack of older posts, and started adding new ones. I had a few months of my membership left so thought I might as well use it.
This week surprise, surprise, I am now getting traffic again and have about 170 posts indexed. And my key word count has increased by 133 to 134!! Average ranking for those keywords is 34.
But... google also had warnings on 11 URLS that it wasn't indexing due to a no-index tag.
Contacted Google and told them I cannot see any no-index tag anywhere in the source code.
Their reply was the "Those pages appear to be working fine" and attached some links to read through. 😒
I still have a couple of weeks left on my membership, but keep thinking this current lift in traffic might just be a "dead cat bounce."
With no affiliate payments since February I'm thinking walking might be a better option.
Hi Mick,
Thank you for your reply, it is interesting to read that some sites are losing a lot of traffic, I am still getting traffic and profit from both of my websites, but it has decreased.
My advice is DONT GIVE UP, pay for your WA membership monthly instead of yearly and if after a few months you feel that you are fighting a losing battle with google and your traffic, rethink your tactic, create another website domain and start creating posts for your NEW DOMAIN.
There is a lot of opportunity in affiliate marketing, you have learned too much to turn your back on it now! All that time and knowledge wasted?
Carry on fine tuning your website, dont fall out of love with it.
Let me know how you get on.
Regards
Brian
Thanks Brian,
I think I can hang in a while longer. 😉
I now have 352 keywords back in the top 100, more than double what I had yesterday.
I also have an email from Google wanting me to do a survey on their performance in helping resolve my problem... !! 😯 cheeky bastards...
Anyway, thanks for the support Brian and have a great weekend.
Michael.