
Google may be about to kill affiliate marketing links - jsm386
https://www.fastcompany.com/90344065/google-may-be-about-to-kill-affiliate-marketing-links
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biznickman
While I agree that they will eat into affiliate marketing revenue, this title
is completely misleading. The links still work, consumers just may not access
them if Google's review algorithm becomes robust.

Frankly, this is not a new issue. It's just the effort by Google to use
publisher content & data for their own profit continues to expand.

I always end up going to Wirecutter and their related sites for product
reviews as they are the modern Consumer Reports. In those circumstances, the
affiliate link will still function as anticipated.

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liveoneggs
AMP-shopping is next

~~~
jpalomaki
Is the Amazon’s one-click shopping patent still valid?

Google could add a ”Buy now” button there, handling customer shipping data and
payment and just forward the order to merchant that serves customer’s
location.

For smaller vendors it might be interesting to replace AdWords with the
possibility to list stuff for sale. Instead of click price, you would tell how
big cut of price you give to Google if customer makes the purchase.

~~~
chrishepner
Amazon's one-click shopping patent expired on Sept 11, 2017:
[https://qz.com/1057490/a-patent-that-helped-amazon-take-
over...](https://qz.com/1057490/a-patent-that-helped-amazon-take-over-online-
commerce-is-about-to-expire/)

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debacle
Title is very inaccurate clickbait. Killing affiliate marketing would be a
very bad idea for Google.

~~~
iagovar
I run a bunch of websites. Basically, I do some surveys and provide
information for consumers. I monetize it through affiliate links. Adsense
won't make it profitable enough and people is not willing to pay for that
info.

If they drop me in the search results because I use affiliate marketing they
are basically cutting 50% of my income. That's a pretty hard hit, specially
when I'm not a computer scientist and I can't just look for another job that
easy in my country.

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ravenstine
If I understand correctly, this appears to be a continuation of the growing
disparity between the little guy and Big Corp. The article talks a lot about
publishers relying on affiliate links, but there are also many bloggers,
YouTube channels, podcasters, etc., who have been making use of affiliate
links. Will Google be "bypassing"(for lack of a better word) those peoples'
affiliate marketing as well by placing their own links for those same products
at the forefront?

~~~
luckylion
The small sites have already lost most of their traffic for products to the
large publishers which Google favors.

Question is how this will work with the courts. There's already a law suit in
Germany brought by a large price comparison site against Google, suing for
500m because Google pushes their own "Google Shopping" results in SERPs,
claiming they are abusing their monopoly.

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MisterBastahrd
Unless Google does something about Amazon Prime, good luck with that. Not
having to pay for shipping on a case by case basis is the ultimate killer app
for online purchases.

~~~
debacle
Not to mention that people wont blink at paying Amazon hundreds of dollars a
year for services, but make memes on the Internet about paying for YouTube
Red.

~~~
cameronbrown
I think it's indicative of a larger problem in society: people don't value
bytes of video and will penny pinch to the extreme in that department, but
they'll gladly drop any amount on Amazon shipping.

After all, why should they? The entertainment industry has acted atrociously
to consumers in recent decades - it's just a shame that independent content
creators are being stifled (declining ad revenue, refusal to pay, etc..) by
the behaviour of megacorps.

~~~
debacle
I disagree. I think it's indicative that people don't trust Google to provide
value.

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aiCeivi9
Slightly related but I recently saw more spammy "product review blogs" (that
just list products with very short description and affiliate Amazon links) in
top 10 google results. I wonder if that is related.

~~~
Semaphor
It's certainly not just Google. Same thing in Germany on DuckDuckGo.

The last time I had checked current reviews (though that was for tech
products, now for DIY home improvement), I got researched lists with
information – and happily clicked on the amazon.de affiliate link.

Now? I checked 20 sites that literally all had the same content because it was
nothing but the highlights extracted from the Amazon product page. Utterly
useless.

~~~
luckylion
> I got researched lists with information – and happily clicked on the
> amazon.de affiliate link

Don't rely on those too much, I've had some business with the publishers of
those sites, and they are very low quality and basically just push the
products that sell well, not the best ones. It's a scam, which is also why
they usually won't say that they did a "test" (instead it's just a
"comparison"), because that would hold them to higher standards and they'd
catch too much flak.

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jsloss
We’re moving from a world where we actively search to a word where “the best”
is recommended to us.

Google will continue to build out lines of business that make sense in a post
search world (hardware, shopping platform, ....?)

