Google’s latest update adds further woes to affiliates hit by manual penalties earlier in the year.
We asked Connected Path’s Anthony Clements for his view on what the changes mean. Read on for The APMA’s take.
The policy update announced by Google on 19th November will further impact content publishers that generate revenue by publishing content on their websites deemed by Google to be outside of their ‘core’ business.
Although this policy is peppered with discordant search-engine terminology like ‘site reputation abuse’ and ‘parasite SEO’, it doubles down on Google’s overarching theme that it does not want a website to use its positive SEO credit to rank (and generate revenue) in an unrelated genre.
In affiliate marketing the most obvious scenario is content publishers using their domain authority to rank in the voucher code space, but this policy also affects medical, sports, business and media websites that publish third-party reviews on unrelated sectors like loans and gambling.
White-label sites
The initial roll-out of this policy in May primarily affected publishers that were white-labelling content from other ‘third-party’ companies, specifically voucher code content. In the spring companies that syndicated voucher code content to third parties, and of course the publishers using their content, saw their search rankings wiped out almost overnight.
However this impact wasn’t universal, and there were companies operating ‘third-party voucher models’ which did not initially seem to receive penalties. The generally accepted view was that these sites had escaped penalties because they either ‘own’ or were closely involved in the production of the content.
In some instances, they even explained on their website that their own teams were heavily involved in sourcing deals and promotions.
In challenging Google’s site reputation abuse policy, the affiliate industry has used the argument that the publisher owning the host domain has editorial oversight and control of the content, and therefore it should not be considered ‘third-party’.
In this latest update it now appears that Google has moved to close this ‘loop-hole’ by saying that using content that takes advantage of a website’s already established search ranking will be penalised ‘regardless of whether there is first-party involvement or oversight of the content’.
This removes one of the affiliate industry’s key challenges to the penalties first issued in May. We are now likely to see content sites that initially escaped unscathed now receive penalties for using unrelated domain ranking to push either voucher code content or content unrelated to their domain’s original ranking signals.
Helpful update or commercial intent?
For many in the affiliate industry, already weathered from years of dangling on the strings of Google’s puppet-master approach to algorithm changes, this will be another example of the company dressing commercially-orientated search changes up as user improvements.
Indeed, when you couple the impact of the site reputation abuse policy changes with the havoc wrought on independent content sites by the various Helpful Content Updates (HCU) it’s hard to remember a year when Google has had such a sweepingly negative impact on the affiliate industry.
Displacement masking traffic drops
Of course, the attractiveness of the affiliate model is in its sheer depth of content and distribution.
As was the case in May, one site’s loss will be another’s gain.
In the voucher space, we can expect to see the continued growth of pure-play voucher code partners and also sites that are predicated on user-generated content even if they have a voucher code component.
Google has stressed that user-generated content is exempt from the ‘parasite SEO’ policy, together with sufficiently disclosed advertorials.
The same can be said for independent content affiliates, who after a year of devastating traffic losses at the hands of HCU are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel.
These gains will likely come at the expense of bigger publishers who are being told, in no uncertain terms, that reviews about dog food subscriptions on domains built around business or mainstream news content just isn’t going to fly in the search results anymore.
Fear of the unknown
Crucially, site reputation abuse policy infringements will continue to be actioned manually.
This means the implementation of the policy will continue to feel ad hoc, and the timing as to when affected sites receive SEO penalties will be random and unstructured, leading many sites to continue to ‘look over their shoulders in fear’ as to if / when they will be hit.
The APMA’s thoughts
The APMA’s view is Google’s latest rollout appears to narrow the distinction between the involvement of first parties and third parties when creating content.
While we note that ‘classic’ affiliate marketing techniques should remain unaffected – at least for now – this move is a setback for legitimate businesses helping to drive vital revenue for their partners. We have also heard anecdotally of some traditional affiliates being hit by Google’s changes in 2024 despite them adhering to their guidelines.
From speaking with APMA members they are seeing some affiliates being elevated while others are being penalised. That can lead to displacement of traffic and revenue which doesn’t necessarily show up in an affiliate network or programme’s overall numbers.
Where affiliates have multiple sites, some are spiking and others dropping, so that variance is also being masked within an overall publisher’s numbers. That can also conceal what is happening on a programme level basis so we urge account teams, brands and agencies to dig deep into their data to understand what movement is occurring granularly.
They should reach out to valuable partners hit by Google’s changes and discuss how they can support them to ensure their businesses remain viable.
Aside from the unhelpfully emotive term ‘parasite SEO’ which has been used by Google and entered common parlance, we are keen for Google to recognise how important affiliates are, in general, in creating valuable content that feeds their SERPs.
Generally speaking, being reliant on single traffic sources for revenue has obvious financial exposure risks. Our 2024 State of the Nation survey shows that the majority of publishers rely on Google products for more than 60% of their traffic. Many affiliates have fantastic engagement with their member bases and we urge them to look at how they can use that relationship to diversify their revenue streams.
Further reading:
https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/11/site-reputation-abuse
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-strengthens-policy-against-site-reputation-abuse/533018/
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