Not So Stupid Affiliate Tricks
Affiliate programs can be an effective way to drive incremental traffic to your Web site. Many of the paid search advertisers we work with use affiliate programs for this purpose.
Back in the day, it was possible for both a merchant and its affiliates to have paid advertisements show for the same search (on brand terms or otherwise). But, some search engines (e.g., Google) clamped down on this practice of “double serving” a couple years ago to ensure a better user experience. Google’s policy now states:
Please note that we’ll only display one ad per search query for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the Display URL. This means that if you’re an affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads using the same (or a similar) domain in the Display URL.
This means that a merchant and its affiliate must compete with each other if they both want to advertise on the same keyword. The ad with the highest quality score (of which max CPC is a component) is the one displayed. For merchants, this can drive up paid search costs unnecessarily. As a result, most of the merchants that we work with have strict policies in place for their affiliates. A common policy is to disallow affiliates from buying paid search advertising on the merchant’s company brand names.
Trick #1
So, folks on our search team were curious a few weeks ago when we noticed Google seemingly “double serving” ads for the same domain. The domain (and company name) both begin with a “W”. Why does this matter, you ask? Well, the tricky affiliate was using two Vs to simulate the W. So, to Google, the display URLs were different. But, to the unsuspecting searcher, the display URLs looked about the same. A related trick that we have seen is affiliates using a dash instead of a dot in the URL (www-abc.com vs. www.abc.com).
Trick #2
We also noticed a case where affiliates were using the same display URL but geo-targeting around a company’s headquarters location. So, unsuspecting marketing folks sitting at their headquarters desks saw their paid search advertisements whenever they searched for the retail brand name. However, if these same folks had jumped on a plane and done the search from most other parts of the United States, an affiliate’s ad would have shown instead for the same search. You don’t have to jump on a plane to check this, though. Google, for example, explains how to test your geo-targeted ads here.
The moral of the story is to keep an eye on even your best performing terms (e.g., brand name terms) to ensure that affiliates aren’t using tricks to get around your policies (note: competitors could also use these same types of tricks to outflank you).