As we wrote last week, love it or hate it, Google’s quality score has become a fact of life for those wanting to spend money on Google. Regarding the motivations behind the quality score, we said then, "Cynics will say that constant quality score updates focus more on disintermediation, hidden agendas, and increasing ecpm in order to provide the levers necessary to have financial results in order." Whereas, "Purists will contend that by making advertisers more accountable and putting in place a system that rewards ads and products that make sense for the keywords on which they appear and punishes those that offer limited value and leave a potentially bad taste in clicker’s mouths, Google has achieved advertising nirvana – ads that come closer to parity to organic results and higher earnings." Both sides speak to the aim of quality score, to benefit the search experience on Google, with the term "benefit" speaking to the heart of the purists and cynics – relevance or profit. Quality score doesn’t have to imply an either or scenario; it can serve both aims, and we believe it does, helping them raise the bar on both ends – for more relevance and to extract as much as possible from their advertisers. We call their strategy building the foundation and plugging the leaks, the former referring to their desire for building the best engine irrespective of revenue, the latter their methodology for making lives tough on those who stand between the way of the direct advertiser and Google, i.e. the performance marketers who helped build their business. In this follow-up to last week’s article, we take a look a few examples of sites that can get traffic and do well for the advertiser and affiliate, but those looking to replicate will find themselves facing an uphill battle at Google.
Type 1 – Thin Affiliate / Jump Page
Let’s look at an ad that we saw:
Heading to their respective landing pages give us:
A. FreeAdultChatNetworks.com
We’ve seen two versions of the landing page. The one we show here is the main page if you type in the domain. It’s a two pane design, with the top half (shown) meant to show for a specific browser with some content on the bottom. The domain is an interesting choice, highly clickable and completely within reason, but by containing the word adult, you could argue that it gives the wrong implication, i.e. the sexual meaning as opposed to applying older in age.
This same affiliate also runs, iSinglesChat.com, which features a slightly different take on FreeAdultChatNetworks.com. Both send traffic and are branded with True.
B. FreeChatRoomsInstantly.com / ChatRoomsInstantly
Another version of the site is this:
Unlike the two above, this one goes unbranded for its main page but a version of the landing page we see (second image) contains some branding / mention of the advertiser ultimately receiving the traffic. Clicking on the expertly designed "Continue" buttons will go more often than not to the dating aggregation site, SpicyorSweet.com. although they appear to employ basic filtering and rules for alternating where traffic goes.
The reason we say these types of sites (often referred to as thin affiliate sites or when not as robustly built out they get lumped in the category of jump pages) face an uphill battle deals with the fact that Google doesn’t win. The affiliate makes money and the advertiser makes money, and true Google makes money on the clicks, but it sets off the nebulous Google values flag because the user benefit seems less than the advertiser and affiliate benefit. Complicating matters, these sites ultimately drive traffic to an end advertiser, and Google doesn’t like what it feels are middle men. While savvy, these sites will struggle to make the case that they add more value to the user experience than the user seeing an ad for the direct advertiser and going to their site. We, as much as anyone, can argue otherwise, but we mention it because right now it doesn’t matter what we think, only what Google thinks.
Type 2 – Survey Page
The second major category typically doesn’t receive the volume that the think affiliate sites do. These contain more content, and try to appear as though some decisioning criteria took place and that the users receive the benefit of that by viewing a ranked listing. We again use the competitive field of dating.
A. OfficialFreeDating
In this example, the site takes an exclusivity angle, promoting only Singlesnet. It mentions other dating services on its left hand navigation, but the site focuses on driving users to Singlesnet. There is additional, editorial content not found on Singlesnet, and as of the time of capture, an ad for Singlesnet also appeared on the same keyword.
B. Free-Local-Dating
While it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that our two examples come from the same company, as in the OffialFreeDating site above, this one also ranks Singlesnet best. It also incorporates part of the signup process thanks to a host and post relationship with the company or cpa network it has the deal through. In following with the tradition of the survey style site, results are listed from best to worst, with each listing containing a rank and rating (usually designated by stars or similar). There is a description and then the pros and cons of each to help explain why it ranks where it does. A click on the listing will go to the site and still earn money for the affiliate. Users will usually click on more than one listing.
Survey Pages tend to look a little bit more legitimate on initial inspection, and they started more to pass muster with Yahoo’s editors than Google crawlers. The downside is scale, as its harder to obtain the levels of conversion that you can with well done thin affiliate pages. As a result, these pages struggle to achieve a high volume of traffic as they can’t bid as aggressively on a broader number of keywords. These too face an uphill battle in Google, as the engine disagrees (almost hypocritically) in showing results based on yield. Additionally, many examples of these sites don’t contain enough additional information for them too pass the user value test, and like thin affiliate sites, the whole category starts to come under pressure from future quality score updates.
Type 3 – Click to Click Arbitrage
Last and perhaps least, in terms of volume, sit the click to click arbitragers. We’ve covered these in past articles, and within this category exist quite a few sub-categories, including those who have some content but use primarily ad sense, those with search feeds from other engines, and those who send traffic to sites hosted with domain parking companies. Of all the types, the click to click arbitragers have seen the biggest impact from quality score changes, often being directly targeted in the changes. Their sites also leave them the least amount of room for creativity, opening them up to the Google bots easier than some other sites. Here is an example of one starting to come back (for now).
Click4Every
The trick this site uses is to take the user to the page but instead of the search feed results displaying right away, it shows a loading page. Whether they do this to increase click-throughs and user commitment or if it helps pass the Google test, we don’t know. The results page is a fairly standard search feed example.
At the end of the day, being in the middle between Google and the advertiser is a hard spot to be. The value added to the advertiser is there, and they like all the additional customers they can get, but it’s Google that continues to want to serve them directly, and it is up to us to work even harder to prove our value, which we all know exists.
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