New Challenges in Affiliate Marketing: Google Algorithm Update and Forbes' Coupon Page Removal

Social influencers rely on content to gain followers' attention and are subject to the restrictions of platform traffic recommendation and distribution; website administrators rely on content to obtain SEO rankings and are influenced by search engine algorithms. Fundamentally speaking: both are relying on platforms for survival, and being legal and compliant is very important.

In March 2024, Google updated its search engine operating guidelines and added a new policy provision regarding website reputation abuse under the spam policy, which officially took effect on May 5th. For a moment, it was like a heavy bomb exploding in the Affiliate circle.

Even before the algorithm officially took effect, the overseas news media website Forbes had deleted its secondary category Coupon pages and simultaneously used the noindex command to prevent web crawlers from indexing. Regarding this information, I briefly shared it in the cross-border marketing circle knowledge planet of Gentan. This article mainly provides in-depth interpretation and some personal opinions.

After the algorithm officially went online, immediately following was this picture collated by someone. It turns out that Forbes was not the "only offender"; there were also other "accomplices", such as WSJ(), CNN, Businessinsider, The Washington Post, Wired, Fortune, and a large number of industry media were affected: some directly deleted the Coupon classification pages, and for some pages, although not deleted, the no-index led to a significant drop in traffic.

Then why does a Google algorithm update have such a significant impact on these lofty industry major media? One main reason is that although they are ostensibly news media, they are also doing Affiliate and online earning monetization. The update of the algorithm affects the allocation of SEO traffic and subsequently affects monetization revenue.

For all website administrators and Affiliates, SEO is only a means, and Affiliate is the goal. A website with traffic is a Money Site and can continuously obtain passive income.

What is Website Reputation Abuse?

It refers to some authoritative sites publishing low-quality third-party content without supervision from other parties, and they themselves may not conduct review and supervision. Due to the authority of the website, these pages can also transfer a certain amount of weight to enhance the SEO ranking.

Google gave a very vivid example: An educational website hosts a web page dedicated to introducing loan advertisements written by a third party and distributes the same web page to other websites on the network, with the main purpose of manipulating search rankings. In layman's terms: Utilizing one's own authority to do side businesses.

This Google algorithm update mainly targeted the rankings of third-party coupon pages created by a large number of well-known industry media such as Forbes, WSJ, CNN, Businessinsider, The Washington Post, Wired, Fortune, etc., believing that they utilized the advantages of their own authoritative media to manipulate keyword rankings.

Why the Coupon Monetization Logic of Industry Media Such as Forbes

Industry media creating coupon pages and joining affiliate platforms for monetization is actually a matter that occurred around 2020.

In recent years, the proportion of offline media newspaper and periodical subscriptions has declined. Online, due to the fragmentation of user time by social media platforms, the time users spend browsing website media is actually less than before. The days of most media are not so good, so they are thinking of ways to achieve traffic monetization.

The success of Buzfeed (similar to Toutiao in the US version) in E-commerce Content exploration has also attracted the attention of more peers. Everyone is looking for ways to monetize their content to improve the overall revenue level.

Some media have summarized the common monetization methods of industry media: Paywall, Subscriptions, Display Ads, Retail Media, Affiliate, etc.

Among them, the Affiliate monetization method is achieved by using the Coupon page as a carrier. A secondary or tertiary page is newly built directly on the original website. The construction of these pages can be directly updated through third-party tools, that is, the White Label Solution in the affiliate ecosystem below, such as Upfeat GSG. Relying on the weight of their own website, basically, the new pages outperform the rankings of other specialized Coupon websites and are far ahead, simply making money while lying down.

For specialized coupon websites such as Groupon, Retailmenot, Coupons, etc., this Google algorithm update has given them a breath of relief.

Impact and Interpretation

Each Google algorithm adjustment is a considerable test for website administrators, whether for industry authoritative media or small and medium-sized blog websites. The ranking fluctuations of their keywords mean fluctuations in traffic and subsequently changes in revenue.

For the entire affiliate industry, this adjustment is actually a redistribution of benefits. Industry media websites can no longer manipulate rankings by simply adding a coupon page relying on the authority of their own websites.

The dropped rankings will still be filled by the originally more relevant and weighted coupon websites. From the perspective of the total affiliate commission revenue, there will not be much change, but it is just distributed to different publishers. Therefore, it cannot be said that the entire affiliate marketing industry has encountered a crisis.

From the perspective of industry media, this part of the Affiliate revenue belongs to the marginal traffic monetization and has little impact on the overall revenue. However, due to Google's supervision, it means that even the most authoritative media in the industry must abide by the rules of search engines and publish content that is helpful to users. Abusing trust will eventually lead to users' distrust.

In fact, this does not deviate from the original intention of the media: Even for good product recommendations, the published content is carefully selected by editors and is not influenced by third parties.