ADOTAS  — It has been a tough few weeks for many affiliate marketers. The Google “slap” is currently in Round Four, forcing many online pay per click advertisers to reboot their pay per click campaigns in the hope of getting in the good graces of the Silicon Valley giant. Google has put thousands of online Web sites that rely upon their pay per click platform out of business. In the Internet Marketing community, this is known as the Google “slap.”I’ve been thinking a lot about Google lately. On the one hand, they do so many things right that you can’t help but applaud them. Many in the pay per click industry believe that Google is quickly going down in history as the most arrogant company that has ever existed. Every company has the right to turn away business that goes against its fundamental criteria and core values. What makes the Google “slap” so different in this regard is that Google never explains its reasoning or rationale to anyone. Instead advertisers are left wondering what they did to receive the wrath of the Silicon Valley giant. In these instances what makes the SLAP so painful is that all of your keyword’s bids have been raised to $5 or $10 a click, making it impossible for you to cost-effectively drive traffic. This naturally makes the point that everybody has a price and even Google will compromise their core values if the price per click is high enough.

The purpose of this article is not to beat up on Google. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. Sometimes brilliant people and companies do incredibly stupid things. Certain buzzwords have become prominent in this new pay per click era. These terms like “visitor experience” create an entirely new era in advertising procedures and ethics. In the good old days of yesteryear, you would pay an advertising company for placement and as long as your advertisement was not in violation of their terms of service, the deal was consummated and nothing changed from that point forward. These days you can be running a campaign very profitably and effectively using Google Adwords only to encounter that Google now has a problem with your campaign. When was the last time an advertising company decided they knew more about your business than you did?

The issue that search engine marketers have is that they are forced to read their digital tea leaves wondering “what changed” and why Google now is penalizing them. Google is a pretty smart company. What myself and industry experts alike cannot understand is why Google does not step forward and clearly communicate exactly what it is that they need and want. Like I said, sometimes brilliant companies and individuals sometimes do some really stupid things. Regardless how Google’s Public Relations Department spins it, they are coming across as more and more of a digital bully.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately there is a lot going on in the pay per click industry. Venture Capitalist Carl Icahn has made a deal with Yahoo ending his proxy battle to deliver control of Yahoo to Microsoft. Yahoo had rejected Microsoft’s $31 a share bid in spite of the fact that their stock is currently trading in the $21 range. The Management and Board of Directors at Yahoo is preparing for their annual shareholders meeting on August 1st and today, the Internet pioneer is releasing its second-quarter earnings. What CEO Jerry Yang will have to explain to shareholders is that if Microsoft took the company over at $31 a share the market capitalization of Yahoo would be $12 billion higher than it is right now. Jerry, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.

With the stakes that high I’m betting that Yahoo and their management team are put out to pasture. If by some miracle the top brass at Yahoo can talk their way out of this dilemma they belong in politics not pay per click marketing. When I crunch the numbers the only criteria that shareholders are going to care about is “you ran away from Bill Gates $10 a share higher than where we are today!”

Twelve billion is a lot of moolah even in the pay per click arena. My advice to Yahoo management, polish up those resumes. A great site is jobs.yahoo.com.

We are all watching this drama unfold but few are anticipating what the future will hold if Google gets control of Yahoo. With the Google “slap” in full swing this is something you better factor into your future online marketing efforts. Google currently has a market share of 56% of the search engine marketing marketplace. Should Google be successful in taking over the Yahoo search market, they would control more than 75% of the pay per click search engine marketing marketplace. While Google is absolutely brilliant in some regards, I welcome any competitor that will offer an alternative to “the slap.” A Microsoft-Yahoo merger certainly positions itself as the underdog — a sort of a kinder, gentler pay per click search engine. It is a horrifying prospect to think of Google exporting their “slap” tactics to more of the pay per click marketplace.

Pay per click marketing is the lifeblood of many online businesses. During this past week Webmasters, marketers, business owners and advertisers have been logging in to their Google Adwords accounts to find that all of their bids have been inflated from pennies to $10 a click. These “players” are literally out of business and left clueless as to what Google wants or expects from them. I’ve seen sites that have incredible organic search engine rankings maintain their positioning in Google over this period. In other words, Google will send them regular traffic but not paid traffic.

One other major issue with “the slap” is that Webmasters are beginning to theorize that once you’ve been slapped you cannot fix it. You might as well trash your domain and start from ground zero. Google remains conveniently silent in this regard. The reality facing online marketers is that using Google Adwords is not for the timid or faint of heart. With what has been taking place it is a necessity that you master the adwords platform including their Google Webmaster Guidelines and the Landing Page & Site Quality Guidelines. Otherwise the chances are that you are setting yourself up for failure before you begin.

Currently keywords on Yahoo cost roughly 20% to 25% less than Google. Online advertisers are concerned about the inflationary pressures on keyword costs should a merger between Yahoo and Google result. More terrifying is the concern that a merger between Google and Yahoo will result in the infamous SLAP and silent treatment being exported to Yahoo’s loyal customers.

The demand for quality traffic generation has never been greater.
In 1997, there were 200 million pages on the World Wide Web. Today there are over 25 billion pages online with over one-half million new pages coming online every day. Marketers want to use a stable and consistent pay per click platform that allows them to quickly and cost effectively drive traffic to their websites and measure how their message resonates in the marketplace. In many regards, Google and its arbitrary and mysterious policies have set themselves up as a major obstacle in this regard. Rumors abound in the forums and blogosphere that Google is even evaluating how effectively the server, in which your website is on, operates. If your server is not to Google’s liking……slap, slap, slap!

Unless Google talks we are all left deciphering our digital tea leaves. For that reason I contend that a Yahoo-Microsoft merger will increase competition and better serve the interests of the pay per click marketplace.

While Google has been penalizing sites and lowering their quality scores it is evident that they have not been paying much attention to the results that their own search engine delivers. When I visit Google and do a search for the keyword “search engine,” they rank themselves #70.

Like I said, it has been a tough few weeks for those of us who try to decipher our digital tea leaves.

Stroy By: Harald Anderson  Care of Adotas

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