Tag Archive for: Google

Google cracks down on affiliate marketing and voucher code pages

Google’s recent core algorithmic changes have had a jaw-dropping impact on the rankings of some famous sites that use affiliate marketing – and now they’re manually going after news publishers’ voucher code pages too.

Google’s algorithm changes on site’s affiliate marketing pages

This list, compiled by SEO guru Lily Ray, is shocking. Some of the names at the top you may not recognise in the UK, but there are familiar names: Hello magazine has lost 79% of its search traffic, NME.com is down 73%, GQ is 70%.

Google algorithm changes impact news publishers' search referral traffic

Lily does point out this data from Sistrix only includes the top organic links – not Top Stories, News or Discover.

And according to Press Gazette analysis, some news brands have benefitted from the changes, especially the i.

But search referral traffic could be soon further impacted by SGE – Search Generative Experience – which is generative AI-driven search results displayed on the page. But the results so far have been hit and miss – and even dangerous.

Google SGE results advising on passing kidney stones

Why is Google targeting the search ranking of affiliate marketing and voucher code pages?

Affiliate marketing is where there are links, often in product reviews, where the publisher gets a fee if you go on to purchase it. Some sites may highly rate a product because they are incentivised to do so.

And Google did warn that it was cracking down on ‘site reputation abuse’ or ‘spam’, such as where news publishers host low-quality, unchecked content from third parties to benefit from their ranking power – like voucher codes and affiliate reviews. This is not the same as syndicated news content, forums or native advertising with close involvement with host sites.

Google has indicated this downranking is being done manually at the moment – more sites will be impacted by the algorithmic changes.

Google site reputation abuse policy targeting voucher codes - why Tom's Guide is an exception

Is this a bad thing? Well, Google see it as improving the experience for users – which is much needed. And I’m sure like me, you hate being tricked into trying to use an old voucher code or buying a product that appears to have a good review, only for it to be useless.

It’s a sign of how hard things are now for publishers, with sharp declines in social traffic and display ad revenue. It seems diversification of income streams and focusing on high quality, relevant content continues to be the best advice.

 

Read: How news publishers can compete with the threat of AI

 

How news publishers can compete with the threat of AI

It was interesting to read the thoughts of media and tech consultant Ian Betteridge on AI’s challenges and threats AI to news publishers, and what he thinks the solution are – and they are not as difficult as you may think.

“What’s your competitive advantage as a publishing business? It’s not the ability to churn out more articles than anybody else”

 

AI could mean a move away from cheap and easy SEO-friendly articles

Threat of AI to publishers: Google search results

In an interview with Media Voices, Ian rightly asserts that the low-hanging fruit of SEO-friendly ‘what time is kick-off’ and ‘when are the shops open over Easter?’ style-content “can be generated by anybody really cheaply, and got up online fast. They can milk whatever traffic’s there.”

And as we already see when we search for something, “a lot of that stuff is going to be answered directly by Google” on its search results page – and it’s only going to get better with Google Bard.

And the recent changes to Google’s search ranking algorithm are designed to downrank SEO-chasing, low-quality and spammy articles.

Focus on your USP to beat AI: authoritative, credible and distinctive content

Ian poses a good question to large publishers:

“You are a company with 1,000 employees. What’s your competitive advantage over the one person who can do that every week? If the answer is, you haven’t got any, then you need to rethink your content strategy. Because that’s not a viable business.”

In effect, you need to look back at what makes you stand out from your rivals and remember why you grew your audience initially: good, credible, authoritative journalism that your audience cares about.

Use your audience research and analyse your digital stats to see the content that is of interest to your readers. If you focus on that, you are likely to build a stronger following and be in a better position to transition some of those people to pay for your work.

As Ian says,

“The big advantage you’ve got as a human being is you’ve got experience, so you can go out and talk to people. AI can’t do that… And that’s quite old-school journalism in a sense, because it is about tapping into the emotions and the needs of your audience in a way that only a human can do with another human.”

If you think about AI videos, for example, we’ve seen a lot of poorly-made ones that illustrate what someone is talking about but lack human empathy and connection. Or remember when Microsoft used AI to write travel guides?

Ian also talks about the rise in affiliate content, which is often poorly produced and leaves you feeling that they’re selecting something for revenue over a proper, expert review – personally, I prefer to go a trusted, reputable site like Which? first, than rely on Google results.

It was interesting to read of Reach’s plans to centralise content production for certain types of articles, allowing regions to focus on more original articles. Whether this means these hub-produced pieces have the flair or personality on things like TV reviews, remains to be seen.

This doesn’t mean that AI is bad for publishers

Multiscreen social media

There’s already been some great use of AI to automate some manual, time-consuming tasks, help optimise content such as selecting the best performing headline out of a handful written, and provide a more personalised experience for the user, from TikTok to Netflix.

To transition your news publishing business to succeed in the era of AI will take time – and as Ian says, “There’s going to be a whole world of pain to get to that point.” But if you keep focused on your audience and your data, you have a good chance of doing well and be rewarded for it by Google and others.