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.
>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.
True. Publishers always hated that Facebook and Google would share too much of an article on their own platforms that no one would click through, and they'd miss the ad impression.
This thing is a similar issue but missing out on affiliate clicks instead of ad impressions.
I'm glad the author is keen and pointing it out, though.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.