Affiliate Monitor
5
Fake news
Fake news
● Always look on the bright side of life ● Growing the size of the pie ● Cakeism
● Crashing the party bus ● The party ’ s over
PART ONE
Sometime in early May , Google dropped a bombshell on the affiliate space . This wasn ’ t just another core update . One of those had taken place a matter of weeks before with the usual list of winners and ( mainly ) losers .
No , this update was different and affected the media partnerships which have become a huge area of focus for the betting and gaming affiliate space . The timing of the move , just as the major listed affiliates were reporting Q1 earnings , meant that investors and analysts were given pretty much an instantaneous reaction to a move that had clearly come as something of a surprise .
“ It ’ s very early days ,” said Better Collective CEO Jesper Søgaard who noted that the move had immediately impacted the rankings and hence the traffic for some of the company ’ s media partnerships .
Similarly having to provide instant commentary was Charles Gillespie , CEO at Gambling . com Group , who pointed out that Google had “ moved the goalposts ” for the whole affiliate sector , not just the betting and gaming segment .
“ This is not a typical update to Google ’ s algorithms , but rather a global policy shift , which affects all industries , not just online gambling ,” he told analysts .
Gillespie said that “ for many months ” Google ’ s human reviewers have been internally flagging content that they perceive to be violating the company ’ s policies or what it refers to as “ site reputation abuse ”.
He added : “ The amount of content that has fallen within the parameters of Google ’ s new policy is greater than anyone would have expected , whether that content was created by the
June 2024