In September 2009 (was it really that long ago!) Google cracked down on affiliates who were using PPC to promote bridging pages for merchant websites who they deemed were not adding value to users searches and then either slapped or suspended their PPC accounts at the time. There was a big uproar in the affiliate world about this mainly due to the way Google gave little, if any, warning of the imposing suspension of accounts (check out the Webmaster World forums if you are interested www.webmasterworld.com) As a result a lot of affiliates had to rethink how they could promote their sites and how they could make better sites that adhered to Google’s landing page relevancy guidelines.
We’ll nearly a year on since the original crackdown, rumour has it that Google will be looking at affiliates again in the run up to Xmas and seeing that they are not in breach of these guidelines. Whilst we promote the correct way of doing affiliate marketing in having relevant websites that contribute to the consumer buying cycle, we thought we’d let you know of ways that you can protect your AdWords campaigns, should you not be 100% sure your site is going to pass Google’s guidelines.
Areas for concern:
1. If you have a different domain to that of the brand you are trying to promote then you should be okay, however, we are not 100% sure of this with the upcoming crackdown.
2. If you have your site designed so the style looks and feels the same as the merchant you are trying to promote, then this is probably a ‘no no’ in Google’s eyes. Affiliates who have sites that try to ‘trick’ users into believing they are on the merchants site are ‘frowned upon’ by Google.
4. Anyone who has an obvious bridging page (but we expect Google got rid of most of these last year.)
So if you are not sure that your site is going to pass Google’s guidelines, here are some tips to help try and stay away from Google’s radar…
How to avoid Google’s radar:
- Dont have an MCC (master client centre) in Google AdWords. If Google does pick you up then it will spider through all the accounts to see if there are any other sites / campaigns that are in breach of Google guidelines. As a result rather than just having one site slapped / suspended, you could have all your sites suspended.
- Have different AdWords accounts. One that you can run for legitimate PPC campaigns which are going to good sites or direct linking to the merchants sites themselves. Then move the other AdWords campaigns that you are not 100% sure about to accounts where if they do get suspended it will only effect that campaign.
- When you register your different AdWords accounts do them under different names with different payment details. Google looks at the name of the AdWords account owner, address details and credit card details to check what other accounts an individual owns. We think that the name and payment details are the main ways that Google tracks people, so if you can set accounts up in your friends or families name with different details that would be ideal. Worse comes to worse, apply for different credit cards for the different accounts and you should be able to stay under Google’s radar.
Remember: There are thousands of Google AdWords accounts out there and Google can’t keep up with every single one of them. So they will look for the ones that are spending the most and focus on the bigger affiliates to clamp down on. By splitting out your accounts you’ll have a better chance of not being noticed by Google and you can continue to go about your business.
Disclaimer: Black Hat PPC promotes affiliates to be ethical and doesn’t want (even more) bad press of affiliate marketing than there already is. So we suggest building good sites that will stand the test of time. Having said that, we also know how hard it is to make a living being an affiliate and don’t want to see people suffer if it can be helped. We cannot guarantee that the methods outlined above will actually work, they are our suggestions that may help out some affiliates out there who are probably working to better their sites (which takes time) and don’t want to see a loss in their earnings whilst they continue to become better affiliates.
Brought to you by Black Hat PPC.
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Great post. thanks for the tips, I hope it works.
Do I need to register a new account from a different IP each time?
You could use the tor network when regiatering just to be on the safe side.
No, just use the Tor Network, it will cycle through IP’s so you should be fine if you are using it.