If you’re familiar with pay per click as a method of generating traffic to your website you probably already know that Adwords is really the only game in town. That is if you want traffic fast and in volume. You are also aware then, that Adwords is a massive nuisance to set up properly. This is because Google insists that you play by their rules but rarely make these rules available to their advertisers.

Once in a while Google will also change these rules and shake up an entire industry without any warning. We sometimes call this the Google Slap. It wasn’t too long ago that you could just put up a one page website to capture sales leads and send traffic to is using Adwords. Unfortunately, those days are long gone and Google now makes it very clear that your site must offer “value” to visitors in order to gain a decent quality score from Google. This makes Adwords even more challenging for affiliate marketers.

Google recently slapped its advertisers and this time affiliate marketers seem to have been the targets. Specifically, anyone with review-type sites noticed that their campaigns were stopped or their click prices went through the roof. Review sites are generally sites that talk about the pros and cons of a product and include affiliate links to that product. Visitors read the review, click through the link and if earn a commission on any sales that they refer.

In any event, it seems that this week Google has changed their algorythms again and this time they are looking for Adwords advertisers that are driving traffic to these affiliate review pages or any type of landing page obviously promoting affiliate products. It seems a strange tactic by Google considering that affiliate marketing is such a huge part of online marketing and also that Google itself runs its own affiliate network.

However, it has happened and we must move forward. The question now is what can we, as affiliates do about this new terrain?

Well, to see what I’m doing about it visit the link below. It is pretty cool.

Eric Haaranen is the author of Nice People Can Sell and owner of ModernSalesProspecting.com. Eric extensively reviews internet marketing tools, provides website seo services and always provides free assistance through his sites.