CYBERSPACE—Google has spoken once again on the subject of "Affiliate programs and added value," and one would be hard-pressed not to take it as a full-blown warning that affiliates, especially adult affiliates—who were already demoralized and decimated by the Penguin update—have not seen the end of efforts to thin their ranks. Google justifies its hard stance as necessary to provide "added value to the user," but many people have come to believe that it has adopted a general antipathy toward affiliate programs.
Posted Monday by Search Quality Team member Chris Nelson, the post reads, "Our quality guidelines warn against running a site with thin or scraped content without adding substantial added value to the user. Recently, we’ve seen this behavior on many video sites, particularly in the adult industry, but also elsewhere. These sites display content provided by an affiliate program—the same content that is available across hundreds or even thousands of other sites.
"If your site syndicates content that’s available elsewhere, a good question to ask is: 'Does this site provide significant added benefits that would make a user want to visit this site in search results instead of the original source of the content?' If the answer is 'No,' the site may frustrate searchers and violate our quality guidelines. As with any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take action, including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of our users’ search results. If you have any questions about our guidelines, you can ask them in our Webmaster Help Forum."
Needless to say, for untold numbers of affiliates and performance marketers who have spent years honing and re-honing sophisticated online marketing techniques intended to help and not harm final destination websites, the real world implications of Google's message could not be more serious.
For instance, considering the vast number of DMCA takedown requests received by Google, it's interesting to note the monolithic company talking about "the original source of the content," as if it always really knows what that is. The true origin of adult content in particular is not always easy to pin down, to say the least.
As well, many of Google's consistently top-ranked sites are also huge affiliates, sending much-needed traffic to producers who have seen their ability to wring profit from their porn wane over the years. Many of these sites are top-ranked adult tube sites that are some of the most-trafficked web properties in the world, popular because they contain vast amounts of free content presumably uploaded by people who have the right to disseminate the content. These sites are heavily promoted to the masses not only by the search engines, but also by the mainstream media, which has glommed on to the adult tubes to the exclusion of traditional paysites.
Not all affiliates are equal, either, and there are undoubtedly more than a few webmasters who appreciate Google's efforts to make affiliates more attentive to providing tangible value to the end-user, thus attempting to weed out the good from the bad. It's just that Google's efforts often seem to be less nuanced than they should be, punishing some for doing the same as others being left alone. It's that uncertainty, not to mention the perception of bias, that is often so maddening to webmasters.
If the comments in reply to the new Google post are any indication, frustration continues to reign among the community of web denizens who still hold out hope that Google will once again become the search engine of our dreams. Many others have long since moved on, as Google itself, despite its claimed devotion to Search, may itself have already done.
