• Section: Money Guide - Category: Affiliate Programs
• Written by John Hartley

The latest rule from Google is aimed at affiliates. There has always been a rule that a destination URL can only appear once among the Adwords ads for each keyword. As the merchants generally advertise, that meant affiliates had to use their own URLs in theory. In practice, you could get away with cloaked URLs. But not any more.

Does Google like affiliates? Not really, and it never has. Why? Because affiliates have less money to spend on advertising than the merchants themselves, and Google wants to generate as much money as it can from advertising. Google is primarily an advertising media, although we all think of it as a search engine.

Only one destination URL for each keyword, and you must use a real URL

Google will argue that in limiting one shown destination URL among adverts for each keyword it is avoiding confusion among surfers. For example, if there were three or four adverts on a page with the same URL (

//www.example.com/" target="_blank" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outgoing/article_exit_link');">http://www.example.com/) would surfers be confused? I doubt it, but they might click on several of the ads with the same URLS just to see if they were different. That would mean the advertisers would pay more, because many clickers would be not be buying. The merchants would not like that, nor would the affiliates.

The Rule now being enforced without exception

OK, so Google has always limited this in theory, but now they are saying that they will enforce the rule that the destination URL in any advert must be the same as the actual destination URL without exception. In theory, this means that no longer can an affiliate send a surfer from their Adwords ads direct to the merchant. Instead, they need to send them to their own site first, and need a landing page that is relevant to the ad.

Don't direct linking, but build a list

The best way around this problem is to change the way you set up your business. Instead of doing direct linking, which is sending the surfer through a cloaked link to the merchant's site, build a customer base. Send the surfers to your site and give them the option of signing up for your list, by giving them a free e-book or tool, or going on to the merchant's site. This is the best way of building your affiliate business anyway.

Get leads for your business

Another way around the problem is not to advertise on Google Adwords, but to spend your money getting leads from a lead generation site. You get the leads sent to your sign-up page and this way you will build a list of people interested in the products you are selling. This method takes a bit longer, but costs less than advertising through Adwords, and puts control back in your hands, not in Google's.

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