INSIGHT
Online Reputation
and Affiliates
Affiliates need not worry about reputation in the ‘brand’ sense, but should pay a lot of attention to
genuinely winning good social signals to show ‘reputation’, writes Nick Garner, CEO of 90 Digital.
I’ll start by talking about the trust
ecosystem on Google, because when you
understand this, you understand why
reputation is so important in so
many sectors.
We trust Google. Here is some proof.
When we’re considering a purchase, 84
percent of us are influenced by what we
see online. Google is where 91 percent
of us navigate the Internet from. Pew
Internet carried out a piece of research on
the trustworthiness of Google which found
that, on average, 66 percent of people say
that search engines are a fair and unbiased
source of information. Another research
piece from Eidelman (Figure 1) on trust in
information sources, shows that we trust
search engines as much as traditional
media (newspapers and TV). Generally,
people trust Google and they trust what
Google ranks; which means that, arguably,
your brand is what Google says it is.
We ask Google questions. When we use
Google, it’s because we have a question
Figure 1
Source: Edelman Trust Barometer
Figure 2
Affiliates
Source: Dimensional Research/Zendesk
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iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014
to ask. A typical search query is ‘your
brand name’, or ‘[your brand] reviews’ and
whatever the results are, they will influence
consumer buying decisions.
If a brand has a number of bad reviews
or negative feedback that ranks on their
most important ‘consideration’ phrases,
it can be damning. According to a survey
by Dimensional Research (Figure 2) using
1,046 respondents, 90 percent of us are
affected by online reviews and 86 percent
are affected by negative online reviews. This
validates the importance of good online
reputation for any brand.
Review phrases are ‘consideration’
phrases; i.e. someone is thinking about
buying, but hasn’t yet made their mind
up, so they want third-party unbiased
information to help them make a decision.
This set of principles drives the
commerce on whole parts of the Internet,
but with iGaming affiliates, the trust and
reputation ecosystem doesn’t quite work
like you think.
There is a very counter intuitive thing
about iGaming affiliates when it comes to
SEO: the most profitable affiliates attract
the most commercially hot traffic and pass
them straight through to the operator.
If you could do SEO and not bother with
your own site and just get traffic straight
from Google to the operator, that would
be great – it reminds me of something…
AdWords?
Getting back to the point about
reputation: reputation matters when
you have a brand. You will want a brand