MarcPorcelli.com

The Google Slap

I have been reading and hearing about “The Google Slap” a lot over the past few weeks. Working closely in the affiliate and publisher space, many publishers have been very vocal about this. Investors also have been paying very close attention as many fear it is part of a bigger problem. The Economist chimed in this week on the topic, The case of missing clicks.

Google made a significant change to their algorithm in March that for some has been devastating. The change though is not all bad. For publishers doing arbitrage and sending poor quality traffic, many were negatively affected. Their accounts where completely shut off and they were banned or keyword prices have increased to a level that it is no longer profitable for publishers to promote specific offer(s).

As an advertiser, I am happy with what Google has done. Long term this will (or I hope it does) increase the quality. Many publishers are all about quantity so they can make more money, but it always comes down to quality. Betsy Shiffman of Wired writes, “The logic is this: If Google serves fewer but more relevant ads for any given search query, it can potentially increase click-through rates and ultimately raise ad rates. That should be beneficial for advertisers, who may get fewer but better quality leads from their ads.” This of course would be a good thing.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on the topic, but the implications of the change are having a significant affect on the affiliate marketing space relating to publishers. Perhaps even more significant will be the news on April 17th when Google announces their quarterly results

A great perspective from a publishers viewpoint can be found here compliments of Jay Weintraub’s blog.