landing page load times now tracked and ranked.

Google is now offering landing page load time evaluations for adwords. Nice. Post on the inside adwords blog says load times will be part of quality score starting mid june. hmm, I was under the impression load times were already being calculated.

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Google Product Search is a price comparison engine - Again!

Froogle - Google Product Search, which launched as Froogle many years ago as a price comparison shopping engine later changed it’s format to a simple product search engine that would display the stores that sell a product you are searching for, without grouping the stores that sell the searched product according to prices, but simply in random algorithmic order - each product listing displaying a merchant-specific description and other details.

This was probably because froogle would, at the time, crawl e-stores for price and product information and the index was anything but accurate. Since introducing google base, the product search engine has stopped crawling the web for product info, it instead relies on data-feeds submitted by merchants - in a manner much similar to Shopping.com, Shopzilla and other price comparison sites. Despite the added accuracy, few people actually use google’s product search feature independently of the top-three product listings that appear within universal search.

Now, again, google seems to be experimenting with the price comparison engine format, complete with one description, and product specs per product - which is great news shoppers - there is now a real price comparison engine that includes more buying options than any other out there. As for merchants, most of whom already have their datafeeds uploaded to google base, This would be one of the few price comparison sites that is completely free - merchants don’t pay for clicks or sales, and if your store offers competitive prices, all the better, expect additional traffic!

Not all searches are showing up as price comparison results, but more SERPs are changing their skin real quick. Probably not very long before the transition is completed.

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yahoogle / goohoo

Yahoo testing “Ads by google” with US search queries http://tinyurl.com/5q4hyb

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Adsense update

Adsense ad units become interactive, will improve CTR http://adsense.blogspot.com/2008/04/show-me-ads.html

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Peformics to split.

Google trying to quiet all criticism of being the owner of a search marketing company, will sell the search business of performics, and more importantly integrate it’s affiliate marketing business into existing google products (adsense?).

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google adwords policy change

There’s a Change in google adwords policy “Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception.”

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Coming soon — Video on shareasale

This is very exciting news. Everyone’s favorite affiliate network, ShareASale is hard at work on developing what they call a “v-commerce” solution - a video player/widget built for the sole purpose of affiliate marketing.

Carolyn Tang of SAS announced this to members of the shareasale group in facebook and is currently inviting ideas and suggestions in an ongoing facebook discussion here.

“we’re gettin’ with the times and exploring v-commerce. Nothing like bringing the magic of television online! Our tech team is hard at work developing a player with embedded tracking for affiliates to use on their sites.” ~ Carolyn Tang

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Big News: Ebay Leaving CJ, to launch the ebay partner network

Wow, this is huge. Online super-auctioneer, e-Bay always had an affiliate program, and it was always through a “trusted third party” At first, they were on a microsoft-owned affiliate network (remember clicktrade?) and later migrated to CJ sometime in the early 2000s.

Anyway, Today is an important day in affiliate marketing history. CJ has lost one of it’s biggest affiliate programs. e-Bay is going in-house. They announced this in an email to affiliates today that all the worlds ebays (including ebay US - Not including some of ebay’s non-auction properties such as stubhub, prostores, etc.) will need to be promoted via ebay’s own system beginning the first of April 2008.

“The new platform will go live on April 1st, 2008 PST, at which point eBay will no longer be running its affiliate program through Commission Junction. Beginning April 1st, affiliates should register with eBay Partner Network and migrate their links from CJ to the new platform. “

More details at the announcement page on ebay

Update: See also: AffiliateTip.com - Apparently, this was probably in the works since september 2006. See link on the affiliatetip post to “project rover”.

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Coupon affiliate retailmenot launches social network. TechCrunch has the details

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“Are you an affiliate marketer? You suck!” ~ Calacanis

Jason calacanis keynoted at the Affiliate Summit’08 today. I was very curious what the SEO hater would talk about at the summit ever since it was announced that he will be keynoting the event. Sam Harrelson live-blogged the speech at revenews, which I just finished reading (I’m not at the summit, just sitting here in Bombay wondering what happened - thanks, Sam for the liveblogging!).

Not surprisingly, Jason’s general sentiment during the speech seems to be filled with hate towards the industry with statements like “Give up a life of crime”, “You are at the bottom of the food chain” and “Affiliate marketing is bullshit”, there couldn’t have been a worse affiliate summit keynote speech.

“Someone in this room could create the next digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, etc. None of you probably will create these companies because you’re wired for the quick buck.” ~ Jason Calacanis

Clearly, Jason, who thinks all affiliates are spammers and haven’t added value whatsoever to the web doesn’t really understand what affiliate marketing is. Let me define it for you here jason. Affiliate marketing is the simple act of connecting a buyer with a seller, and it has added tremendous value to the web, and created bigger brands that you will ever dream of creating. Which brands? okay .. lets see .. Affiliate number 1. Ebay - connects buyers with sellers, takes a cut. 2. Google, Same thing, only more CPC. Shopping.com and shopzilla, etc - same thing. Smaller affiliates are also doing the exact thing in smaller, unique and niche specific ways. Jason, I had really hoped you’d have done your homework this time, everyone is tired of your same old hate-speeches.

It is true, some people in the affiliate industry need to do cleaner businesses, but Calacanis - by classifying every affiliate at the bottom of the food chain and etc, has been a total waste of an affiliate summit keynote.

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