"Google is Abusing Its Market Position" Affiliate Networks Respond to Site Reputation Abuse

Last week, in the midst of the Q4 flurry, Google launched a surprise update to its site reputation abuse guidelines. Earlier this year, the policy struck a devastating blow to coupon pages on news sites, effectively eradicating them from search results. 

Now, an update to the guidelines means that Google will start targeting any third-party affiliate content hosted on a well-known domain. Already, this has impacted some large monopolies in the space, including Forbes Marketplace, CNN Underscored, and Wall Street Journal.

In the wake of these actions, many spectators have been hoping to see smaller niche affiliates replace these larger players in the search results. While these giants have started to be switched out for niche sites, they aren’t necessarily affiliates.

Whatever the outcome, the state of affiliate marketing in Google’s results pages is once again in flux. We heard from several of the major affiliate networks about their views on Google’s recent actions against affiliate sites.

“A clear attack on publisher revenues”

Adam Ross, CEO of Awin, described the move as “yet another example of (Google) abusing its dominant market position.” 

He continued, “What started as a desire to clean up search results to improve usability has morphed into a clear attack on valuable publisher revenues.”

In response to the latest rule changes, Ross urges affiliate publishers to diversify their traffic sources and “build close relationships with their audiences that bypass reliance on the tech giant.”