Is Google laying the smackdown on affiliate marketing?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERPs Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the very affiliated Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

I do have affiliations. I'm affiliated with many…

Mordy Oberstein:

But you don't like living in a cave by yourself so you're affiliated.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. You want to build relationships and stuff. I'm affiliated with Wix and with Women Tech SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

And with other groups. I don't have a Costco membership card, but I do have a Tesco membership card.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I miss Costco.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, I'm telling you some of those membership cards, they're really useful.

Mordy Oberstein:

I didn't like the membership. It felt very exclusive. It is a grocery store. I need a membership card?

Crystal Carter:

I just like the deals. I'm like, they got two for one. I'm about that. I'm about that life.

Mordy Oberstein:

They don't have any bags. You got to shove everything out in a makeshift box. So problematic. But the prices are great. Anyway, the SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Costco. Not really.

Crystal Carter:

No it's not.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter search site over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also join the Wix Studio Partners program and enjoy immediate revenue sharing possibilities. Head over to wix.com/studio/partner-program, link in the show notes to learn more, which is kind of very similar to an affiliate program in a way, but it's not an affiliate program. It's a partner program because today we're talking about the possibility of earning revenue via affiliate marketing, being not as easy as it was from an SEO point-of-view. Is it still a viable channel for marketing?

Is Google conducting a war on affiliates? I don't know. To help us find out, all rise, here comes the Judge. SEO sensation and all around good guy and Yankee fan, Supreme founder of G-Squared Interactive, Glenn Gabe will join us live in just a Jiffy to help us understand how the SEO landscape for affiliate marketers has changed significantly. Plus Krista and I will tackle SEO aside, what is the viability of affiliate marketing? And of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us for episode 84 of the SERPs Up podcast as we take a swing at understanding the viability of affiliate marketing on the Google SERP. As lately, it's been 1, 2, 3 strikes. You're out of the all affiliate marketing ballgame.

Crystal Carter:

I see what you did there.

Mordy Oberstein:

Glenn is a massive baseball fan, so that was my ode to Glenn.

Glenn Gabe:

That was awesome. I loved it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Welcome to the show.

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah, that's some intro. I love that.

Mordy Oberstein:

I try.

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah. 1, 2, 3 strikes. You're out. That's for sure.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, that's really true as of late because as we're recording this, we're smack in the middle of the March 2024 Core Update. But if you're not familiar with this, and before I hand it off to Glenn, kind of catch you up on things really quickly. There's been a lot that's changed with the web and that's an understatement.

I think from a Google algorithm point-of-view, I guess two major things that have changed in the affiliate space. And that's the product review update, which has now become the review update. Where Google has basically looked at product review websites and web pages and it's trying to up the quality of what it's showing there. And one of the guidances that it put into its guidance has been not showing just one source for the product. So if you're an affiliate marketer, you're usually just stuffing in your affiliate. But the official guidance from Google is, you should really have more than one source for the product. Because your not supposedly pushing the product, you're just reviewing the product. And the other thing, and I say this without judgment, I am just stating a fact.

And if you're in an affiliate space, you're going to be very upset with me for saying this. But there is a tendency, I feel like personally, my opinions do not represent the official opinion of my employer. But I personally feel there is a long history of pushing less than overall quality content within the affiliate space. And I'm not saying people are doing that on purpose. I think that might just be the natural outcome of heavily focusing on what you're doing in affiliate marketing, just naturally. But that doesn't really align with where Google is going with the algorithm and with that, Glenn. Oh my god, what's going on?

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah, that's a really good intro. So I've been neck deep in the product reviews update, to reviews update. I have multiple posts analyzing these big updates, and now it's just reviews update, which now is being updated on an ongoing basis. Behind the scenes, we will not even hear anymore probably when that's updated at all. It's not necessarily part of Core Ranking, but if you could think of it as that, because it's going on behind the scenes. For example, with the March 2024 Core Update, I'm seeing reviews updates impacted, right? Lily Ray just tweeted about that this morning. Same deal, she's seeing the same type of thing. So that has always happened, right? And I called that in my posts and presentations about this, dueling machine learning systems. Where a core update, you surge and then the reviews update, you drop or vice versa. And I always found that crazy.

I always said, "Is it quality or is it not?". Because one system saying it is and the other system saying it's not. And I do believe that's part of the reason that the reviews update is now behind the scenes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Glenn Gabe:

And by the way, the helpful content system is also now behind the scenes and part of Google's core systems. Not just because of the dueling thing, but that's part of it too, right? I mean it's just madness. So I wrote a post recently where this is before the March updates rolled out and I said, "You know what? Let me take a look. I have have almost 800 sites documented that are review sites, that have seen heavy impact during product reviews, updates or reviews updates.". And I ran them through various visibility tools and I said, "Let me see how they're doing over time.".

Because I don't think I'll check with one update versus another, but I'm like, "Let me see, from the beginning of the product reviews update, way back when in 2021 to now.". And it was carnage. I mean most of these sites are either gone, shut down, or at almost no visibility anymore. And I said, is this a foreshadowing of sites impacted by the HCU? Because if you're not significantly improving and it's not easy to do that. You are in really bad shape. So that post is on my blog and I have screenshots on there. It is really ugly. It is not pretty.

Mordy Oberstein:

Willing to put that in the show notes by the way, in case you're wonder where the post is. The link will be in the show notes.

Crystal Carter:

And do you think that one of the reasons why this particular sector gets hit by this is because of certain practices that are more common in this sector or do you think it's something else?

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah, so I've covered this with so many different review sites and site owners of review sites, where it's thin reviews. I mean, what used to rank was if you're reviewing a list of the best men's running shoes. And it's like a little paragraph with a link off to Amazon and a screenshot or a product image from Amazon. It's like nothing's actually original in the entire thing. That type of stuff is what Google just waged war on. And just so you know, I still have review sites reaching out to me and they still have that stuff. I'm doing a big audit right now on a fairly large site that focuses on reviews. And my entire first deliverable, which was almost 30 pages, was all about this. There are thousands of pages like this. And this is not the way to go in actually 2021, but I'll even say 2024. You need insightful, helpful, valuable reviews content based upon real experience with that product for most products, not everyone. But that's what Google wants to reward. And so that that's kind of what's going on.

Mordy Oberstein:

But that's hard. Well, the thing that's hard for people to get their minds around, there was a website that reached out to Danny Sullivan on Twitter. Danny Sullivan's Google search liaison, and said, "Hey, what happened? We're a product review site. We have a bunch of affiliate links in there, but we offer good content.". And Danny actually kind of did a mini odd and said, "It's not horrible, but you're not really offering anything of value.". And I think when people think, "Well, I'm not doing that, I'm not having all those old school tables with one line of content and multiple Amazon links. I'm writing paragraph after paragraph.". That doesn't mean that it's good. And that doesn't mean that Google should reward it. And I'm wondering, how do you see affiliates succeeding in this space? Has the game from an SEO point-of-view at least shifted for them?

Glenn Gabe:

Massively. So I've had some very tough conversations with site owners or review sites, and some very big companies by the way. Where the way I explain it, and I've said this from the beginning, it's been in almost all of my posts. I like using Wirecutter as the standard, right? Sure. Not every post on Wirecutter is truly amazing, but overall, really good stuff, right? Super insightful, explains to you how they broke it down. They literally buy and go through sometimes dozens of those products or more, to actually test this stuff out. Anyway, so I call it the Wirecutter standard. If you cannot do that, you probably going to have a really hard time in the review space. Now, I had a site owner recently come back to me and say, well, we're a smaller company. There's no way we can do this. And I'm like, "No, you don't have to go nuts like that.".

But when I say have a testing lab, that doesn't mean go buy a lab and have 20 workers in there doing all sorts of stuff. But really have a process in place for getting the products, having multiple people test them, really take original photos, video have animated GIFs, so on and so forth. Pros, cons, graphs, charts, everything that someone would really need to know. That's the way to go. Of course that is very hard to do. It takes time, it takes money and resources. Which is why I've told some site owners, I said, "If you can't do that, you might want to focus on something else.".

Crystal Carter:

So that point of differentiation, you said, "That takes time, it takes money, it takes effort.". So that I think means that maybe people need to rethink which products they expect to review and which products they don't expect to review. I mean, I've done PPC up before with people and they were like, "Oh yeah, we're selling this, I don't know, this chocolate bar for $2 or something.". And I'm like, "Y'all, why are you doing PPC on that?". It's going to cost you so much to advertise that.

Glenn Gabe:

Right.

Crystal Carter:

And the amount of money you're going to get back on that isn't going to be worth it. So do PPC on something that costs $200, do PPC on something that costs that much. Is that something you're thinking about where people are thinking about which things to actually review. Because with their update they're looking at the whole site. So maybe?q

Glenn Gabe:

Well, great point. Yeah. So first of all, I was going to bring this up before I'm really glad you did. Site owners can't say, "Look at this one URL. It's amazing.". They are looking at the entire site. Just like with Core Updates and Helpful Content Update, which is now part of Core, they're looking at all of your content. So if you have one stellar review that doesn't make up for 50 that are really thin, so that's one thing. But second of all, I don't really get into, with clients, what they should be reviewing. I just get into, if you're going to do this, you really need to do it right? And Mordy brought up linking to multiple sellers, which is in the guidelines. And actually Alan Kent had confirmed for me, it's actually part of the algorithm. A very small part. So the way I would say it's like the Core Web Vitals of the reviews update.

Mordy Oberstein:

I feel validated by the way, I was looking at one of the product reviews or review updates, I forgot when it was where it switched over at that point or not. I'm like, "Oh, I see it.". I see sites, pages that went up and down based on the number of sellers. So I'm glad to hear that. I feel so validated. Sorry.

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah, and it makes sense, right? Don't drive everyone just to where you're going to make the most money. Right? Give them an option. If it's on three different sellers, provide links to three different sellers. So really it comes down to is it truly insightful? And I've had site owners go, "Oh, we have the best stuff.". And I'll go and talk to them and take a look. And sometimes I'm like, "It's AI.".

Crystal Carter:

It doesn't take long to sense it.

Glenn Gabe:

I mean, I can't tell you how many times, especially on larger scale sites that really are pumping out tons of reviews. You run it through. And I love Originality.AI, it's probably the best of my opinion. They're literally training systems on human versus AI, versus some other AI detection tools, which are not doing that. And you run it through and it's like 98% AI. The probability that it's 98% means it's probably somewhat AI, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

And if it's not, it's just crap. So, whatever

Glenn Gabe:

Right. It's so simple and lacks insight that yeah, it's probably that. So you have that, you have the content quality, you have the visuals, you have the first-hand experience. You can really tell when someone hasn't really used something and that comes across. People are like, "How can Google know that?". Well, it's literally training its models on this.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the one thing machine learning is trained to do, is look at language profiles and then match them.

Glenn Gabe:

Right. So when you combine all of this together, and now again, it's being updated internally and for all we know, it's like Panda and when it's in, it's gone. Right? Because Panda's, it's probably just completely retired at this point. Well, they said it's retired, but pieces of it are probably part of the Core updates and stuff like that. And just Helpful Content, now multiple systems are evaluating helpful content. So for all we know, the reviews system is maybe not even doing as much anymore. We don't even know. So it's really just about, listen, do it right or don't do it at all, in my opinion.

Crystal Carter:

This is a theory that's been rattling around in my head, but how much do you think Google's being like, we can do this better than you. Google's able to aggregate lots of content, they're able to aggregate. For instance, if you had the men's running shoe, I know lots of people are talking about HOKAs, right? If you have a three line review, Hokas are great. Here's the link to Amazon. Google already has a shopping feed.

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

That has a link to Amazon and has the product description that you probably scraped from Amazon, and they already have that. So why would they need to index your page if it is thin? They can already do that. How much do you think it's to do with that?

Glenn Gabe:

I don't know if that's their thinking, but they basically don't want to provide a bad user experience. Because that means especially now with so many different options out there like, chat Gpt, perplexity, Bing, etc. You don't want people to go, "Wow, this was really bad.". And by the way, on that note, the massive updates that they're rolling out starting last week were because of all these complaints about content quality, search quality and stuff like that. I don't know if it's necessarily that, but I'll give you a really good example. So the other day, I'm not even going to give it out because I'm sure everyone will go to it, but it was a query I did legitimately for me, not necessarily for analyzing for a client.

And my son is doing some stuff he, he's prepping for college and all this stuff and I went, ah, let me look at this. And it went incognito, searched for this thing, a recommendation, and it was amazing. It was Harvard First, which was a great resource. And the second one was a niche site. This guy that writes on this subject, and by the way, I went, "Oh, this sounds like a goofy site or something.". And I went in, it was the most insightful piece of content from one guy that has his niche site. And I was like, that is the reviews update right there. Because it's really good. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

I feel that's where the web is going. That's definitely where Google wants the web to go. And I feel what's happening in the affiliate space with the product reviews, it's sort of like a microcosm of the web overall. It's to Crystal's point, you might not be able. Because what happens now is you want to pump out as many reviews as you possibly can. It's almost programmatic to a certain extent, and you're just going to try to sweep in all the rankings you possibly can. But where the web is actually heading, if you're an affiliate listening to this, you're probably going to hate me saying this. But probably the best advice I can give you, is focus on less and just do it better. Because that's where the web is heading. The whole web is heading towards not going after the head terms, not trying to net all of that very broad traffic and sweep into your website, but Google's showing very specific results for very specific things.

You have a very specific intent at the end of the day, and you want something that's a little bit more nuanced. If you're in the space where you reviewing all these products and you can offer actual experience, actual insights. I use the Wirecutter also. They're my go-to and actually buy a product. I don't even go to Google. I just go right to the Wirecutter, which is problematic, if you're listening to this and you're in the affiliate space. But that's the way of the web and it's going to hit you at a certain point because forget Google. That's where the web is heading.

Crystal Carter:

You all mentioned Wirecutter, another one that is a great affiliate that I'm aware of. In the UK there's a website called Money Saving Expert. And if you're looking to buy a new mortgage or you're looking to get a new credit card or something like that, they are the Go-to for that kind of information. He talks to Parliament, the guy who started that as a blog, and they have affiliate links and they have a declaration that says, these affiliate links help us fund the things. The reviews that we're giving are the reviews that we have. But we also have these links, and if they have an affiliate program, we put it in there because it helps us to fund what we do. And they have a declaration that says that, but they have genuine actual reviews.

And I think that to me, you were talking about value as well, and more to you were talking about quality and the wire cutter is there as well. Yeah, you know they are talking about products. You go there because they're talking about products and it's good quality information. Yeah, there's a little bit of a sell on there. If it's 90% good with a tiny little bit of sell, fine.

Mordy Oberstein:

But that's the problem with affiliate marketers though, because they're all gas all the time. But the web as a whole is moving to a place where people are far more skeptical. People are far more savvy, whether they're trying to consume. And if you're an affiliate marketer, it's counterintuitive as it sounds, you're have to take your foot off the gas a little bit. Glen, do you see them doing that?

Glenn Gabe:

Taking the foot? Yeah, I do. And I'll tell you why. Because when you drop by 70%. No, I'm serious, I mean, when I'm usually helping larger scale sites. It's big hits when I get calls, right? It is not like, "Ah, we dropped by 15%.". It's like a huge crater dropping off a cliff. And they're like, "What do we need to do?". And then you go into a deep audit and it's a lot of work. And some companies move faster than others.

I have one I'm helping now from Europe that is moving very fast, which is really cool to see. They have a whole staff of writers obviously, so they're really trying to refine things. But the unfortunate part is that just like with Broad Core Updates and the Helpful Content Update. Google needs to see all that improvement over an extended period of time. So from the time you fix everything, that's when the clock really starts as you're improving things. So it could be three months, four months, five months. I've seen cases with Broad Core Updates where it's over a year and it pays off because they surge back like crazy. If it's really bad, it can take that much time.

Crystal Carter:

How do you keep the faith when you're working with teams like that? Because I've seen teams who've been hit by something and there's panic.

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

There's panic. People are like, we are panicking. How do you keep the faith for a year waiting for the recovery?

Glenn Gabe:

If you do the right things, most do not have to wait that long. But some do, and I explained that from the beginning and they get it. I mean, you could just see, I can share a million screenshots of sites that have had to wait that I know what they've been doing. Because I've either helped them or whatever. The greatest example, by the way, presented this before. It was Broad Core Updates, but a site came to me, I think they lost about 70% overnight with a Broad Core Update. Big authoritative site, by the way, totally authoritative.

So they tank, I analyze the site and one of the first things I've said is, "This is maybe the worst aggressive advertising situation I may have ever seen in my life.". And they said to me, "We cannot change that. Business-wise no way.". And I said, "Well, then you might as well, I shouldn't even help you at this point, just go ahead and do whatever you're going to do.". So they went, "Hold on, this is great.". Two years, they flat lined, two years. Then they started fixing all that stuff. And during the next Broad Core Update, which was a few months later, boom, they started coming back. So it's almost like you are hammering users so badly, which by the way, review sites do as well. It's not just over-monetization with affiliate, sometimes they combine tons of aggressive advertising and affiliate.

Mordy Oberstein:

Those are the worst.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Those are the worst.

Glenn Gabe:

That is a really tough situation, really tough.

Mordy Oberstein:

Do you find you're getting clients to buy in on preempting this, if you see they have a problem but haven't gotten hit yet. That they're bought in on the idea we better get moving before we do get hit?

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah. So I do have companies that reach out and go, we're doing pretty well, but we know we have some issues and we want to future-proof this. Right? And I love that, right? Because usually just because you haven't been hit doesn't mean there's not bad stuff there. And if you're in the gray area, right? And the way I always explain it, if you're in the gray and move into the black during one algorithm update, boom, you're going to tank. Then maybe you come back and go back into the white, but you don't know what took you down and got hit. So yeah, I mean companies do reach out about that, but most of the time it's after the fact, unfortunately.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think it can be so tricky. And you were talking about that aggressive advertising as well as the affiliates. I think part of it is making sure that you're saying what you're doing and making sure that it's very clear that you know what it is. If Google's looking at your page and it looks like a product page, just like a product collection page, then it should be a product collection page. Don't say it's reviews because it aint, and if you have something that's affiliate. Like we were talking about the Wirecutter, we're talking about with Money Saving Expert. They're giving value, they're giving valuable reviews. Those are actual reviews. If you go to the Amazon reviews, those are actual reviews of what people experience with the thing. Don't say it's reviews when it ain't reviews. And I think that people don't want to arrive on a website thinking they're getting one thing, and getting something else. Because Google can see that, Google doesn't appreciate that, and users don't appreciate that.

Glenn Gabe:

Well, that's exactly right. And I always say, I've been saying it for years, "Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned.". Right? I've been saying that since Medieval Panda days. And it was really cool to actually see NavBoost be spoken about, which is exactly that. Which is Google understanding user interaction signals that in aggregate and going, man, a lot of people are coming back to the search results very quickly from this site. So yeah, don't cheat users, it will not end well. Deception is something that in my audits, unfortunately, I have to surface a bunch of times. This isn't labeled, there's no disclaimer here. People are clicking this, they think it's going to content. They're going downstream to ads or to porn sites or to illegal download sites or whatever. They don't even know where they're going. And that's going to come back to bite you big time.

Mordy Oberstein:

It won't come back to bite you, following Glenn on social media. Where can people find you?

Glenn Gabe:

Yeah, so I'm very heavy on X. So if you're into Twitter, Glenn Gabe with two N's, and then I'm on LinkedIn heavily as well. And I'm also on Mastodon and threads and stuff like that. And I blog as much as I can on my own blog, which is the Internet Marketing Driver on G-Squared Interactive.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, so its gsqi.com and I guarantee you, you'll not be disappointed following Glenn. It's a wealth of knowledge, tech updates. It's everything from news, commentary, insights. I will say this, you're one of the greatest follows in the entire Digital Marketing Industry.

Glenn Gabe:

Wow.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hands down.

Glenn Gabe:

Thank you, man. I appreciate that. That means a lot.

Mordy Oberstein:

Better than Barry means a lot. Better than Barry.

Glenn Gabe:

Oh, better than Barry.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and let him know I said that.

Glenn Gabe:

I will but what about the bread? The bread and butter man?

Mordy Oberstein:

No. Okay, fine. Nothing beats the bread and the butter. That's a visual, but in terms of reading content and consuming information, you beat the bread and the butter. That's just a sandwich. Well, that's an attempt at a sandwich.

Glenn Gabe:

Hey, I appreciate that man. That means a lot coming from you. I appreciate it.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. Link to all the profiles in the show notes. You must follow Glenn. Glenn, thanks so much for coming on.

Glenn Gabe:

No, hey, it was great speaking with you. Lots to talk about. Maybe we can do it again at some point.

Mordy Oberstein:

We'll take you up on this.

Crystal Carter:

Anytime.

Glenn Gabe:

Okay, cool. All right. See you later guys.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bye.

We've talked about this before. What Google does or tries us to do is a testament to where Google sees the web heading. If Google is making it more difficult and harder for affiliate marketers to do their affiliate thing on the SERP. And rank well and bringing traffic and the same practices that worked five, 10, 15 years ago are not working out. Like we just talked about with Glenn, if that's where Google thinks the consumer is at. Then maybe we need to think about affiliate marketing as a whole, just a little bit differently. Which means it's time for The Great Beyond as we're going beyond SEO and into wider marketing with a segment that I just told you what it's called, The Great Beyond.

So pretty much like we talked about with Glenn, I feel and maybe I'm wrong, and I think affiliate marketers are going to hate my guts by the time I'm done with this episode. But I feel like I don't blame affiliate marketers for doing this. I get it, it makes sense. But I think what has to happen is it not making sense for a little while, and that's to take the foot off the brake. If the consumer is looking and thinking in a different way. And you're pushing the affiliate link so hard because you're so anxious. We talked about this in the past, about getting that conversion and rightfully so, because hard to get conversions. But if the audience is in a different place, I feel like affiliate marketers, and you might disagree with me. Need to take that foot off the brake just a little bit and give the user a little bit of space to make a more autonomous decision, and rely on the fact that you've done your job. They'll convert if it makes sense.

Crystal Carter:

Right and I think that with that, that takes confidence though.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hell yeah.

Crystal Carter:

That takes a lot of confidence. That takes a lot of confidence in the content that you're able to create. That takes a lot of time in order to be able to make content that is focused, and that is adding genuine value, and that is maybe less content but better. So being able to do that, you have to have confidence that the content that you're putting out there is actually going to land and is actually going to connect with people. And that's tricky. It's tricky!

Mordy Oberstein:

It's tricky area, and it's hard. And you don't know, by the way, if it makes you feel better. If you're an affiliate marketer and you're listening to this, I think Google's in the same situation as you are. Google themselves is the same situation you are with AI-SGE because they need to figure out a way. They need to figure out a way to get rid of the Blue Links, the ten Blue Links. I don't think it's a viable solution for how people are going to try to explore content going forward and they need to pivot. And the problem is, and I think SGE acting as an agent and a facilitator to show more topics. I just posted this on Twitter earlier in reply to Sagantha Mohandasen about this. I search for Yankees because I'm a big Yankees fan and there are a lot of storylines going on right now.

We're recording this late March, this one's hurt. That one's hurt. An old manager came out in a very nostalgic moment and stepped onto the field to take a pitcher out of the game. All these things are happening, but I only see one narrative when I go to Google. I only see the top stories, carousel, and it's only telling me about this one story. And it's so frustrating because in order to understand all these narratives. I literally had to hear a podcast, had to watch a game, I had to go on social media to hear all these different things going on, where if I just Google Yankees and again, all of the things in one shot, like, wow, that's amazing.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

And Google needs to figure out a way to facilitate me being able to do that. But I think short term, when you pivot like that and you're trying to figure out ad revenue at the same time, there's no good way. You're going to lose out some ad revenue in the beginning until you figure it out.

Crystal Carter:

So I think that the Pivot Google's trying to make, if you're thinking about it great beyond, and I think this does affect affiliate marketers. But I think that the pivot that Google is trying to make is quality information. You can get information from anybody. Right? We're recording this mid-March. Kate conspiracies is making the rounds, about Princess Kate and where she is and whether she's okay and all that sort of stuff. And I hope she's fine. But there's lots of information about that everywhere. Twitter is full of people coming up with different theories and there are newspapers that are saying certain things. And then TikTok has its whole own conspiracy theory, sort of element. And this is a prime example, a lot of these conspiracy theories come up because there's a vacuum of information. We haven't heard a lot of information about Kate from Kensington Palace.

And so people are making up information.

Mordy Oberstein:

As you well should, right?

Crystal Carter:

As people do. So people are making up information, and so then people who are able to put out lots of that information, get a lot of traffic. But is that good traffic?

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly.

Crystal Carter:

It's not.

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly.

Crystal Carter:

Now, the first time I had this experience was I think during the 2020 election, I was trying to figure out what was going on. And there was lots of stuff, these votes are being counted, those votes aren't being counted. This is happening over here. Four seasons total landscaping, the whole thing. There was all of this different stuff.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wix website, by the way,

Crystal Carter:

It was a Wix website. That was some quality local SEO from a Wix website. You can get merch from them. They're still on Wix, like boom. So anyway, so all of these things were going on, and Google was a source of quality for me in that space.

So I could see what people were thinking, generally, what kind of theories people had and what kind of concerns people had from social media. But Google was more of a source of truth. And I think that Google is trying to make sure that it's able to maintain being a source of truth. A source of high quality information. Similarly, in the shopping space, people often come for branded searches. People will tend to go to Google. Right? Because they are more confident that they will actually get a legitimate brand on that. If I go on Facebook marketplace and somebody says that they're selling an authentic Starter Jersey or an authentic pair of Air Force Ones or something like that they may or may not be telling the truth, I don't know. But if I go to Google and somebody says that they're selling authentic Air Force Ones or something on their website, I'm more likely to believe that they are. Because Google has certain criteria that they expect people to meet in order for them to rank at the top of the SERP. Or at least that's what they're trying to do.

And I think that in the affiliate space, pushing for that quality and pushing for trying to be able to show how quality your information is, and sure you're giving product recommendations. I follow lots of influencers online, I follow a lot of hair stuff, and I follow a lot of influencers in there. And people are like, if they don't share what products they're using, people in the comments are like, "What is the product? What is that conditioner? I want to know. What's that conditioner? Where can I get it?". And people will share, "This is the link for the conditioner that I use.". Why? Not just because they want to make money or they want to make money, but because it's quality information. Somebody saw what that somebody did on that review, they saw it was good. They are like, I want some of that action. I'd also like to have some of that information. And if affiliates are able to add real value and with quality at the four of their activity, then I think they'll do fine.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but it's always hard to pivot. Like I'm saying with the Google thing or what you're saying with this, when you pivot and you're trying something new, I would expect take a loss for a little while. And that's a very hard ask. I understand that. But long-term, it's better because now you're aligned with what consumers actually want and are not just stuck with because they have nothing else.

Crystal Carter:

Sometimes when you're doing an SEO audit, sometimes when you're starting SEO. And I've had this before, I've been working with clients and for the first little while we do some adjustments. For instance, getting rid of no indexing certain tags, getting rid of certain tags on the site. No indexing image files or whatever because they have whole pages dedicated to image files, which is very inefficient. Things like that, sometimes your traffic will go down.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's like a migration, right?

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're migrating your strategy. You're not migrating your sight, you're migrating your strategy. There's going to be hiccups, there's going to be blips on the radar. I don't know, potholes on the road. A matter of metaphors, expect that. Doesn't mean you don't do it.

Crystal Carter:

And sometimes you're going to see, I don't know. Sometimes you're going to see changes. Did we need to lose that stuff? If you see a reduction in the number of searches or whatever, maybe that's good. Maybe it's because people were able to find the information the first time and therefore didn't need to search 12 times. Maybe they were just able to find that information about the Yankees the first time and didn't need to go through 12 different things. And the people have complained about, and sometimes it's warranted, but the instant answers and things. If you have a blog that's dedicated to how far is the sun from the earth, right? And all your answering is literally the number, like this many miles or this many kilometers, Google can tell you in the instant answer what that is.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't even get to answer to the SERP anymore. I get push notifications, right?

Crystal Carter:

Right. They will tell you certain things.

Mordy Oberstein:

Tell me things. The weather outside, its sunny today, great. Up in the window, I saw the same thing, anyway. Whatever.

Crystal Carter:

Right? Don't need a weather man to know way the wind blows. But I think that with those things, you need to say, did you need a click? Did that actually need a click? Did you deserve a click in the first place? And are you adding more value, if the earth from the sun question is just a really basic on a question? If you're not able to add more value to that, then Google's probably not going to send you that traffic. Think about the quality. I think they're trying to make sure that they are a quality source of information. And if you think about the people you know in your life who tell you information. I know some people who don't always qualify what they repeat. I know some people, they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I heard this is happening.". And I'm like, "Uh-huh?". You know those people, you take it with a grain of salt, with a pinch of salt, and you're like, "Okay.".

Mordy Oberstein:

Nod your head yes and move on.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, okay. And then you go, if you actually need to know that information. You will go and you will search that just in case, because they might be completely full of it. I don't think Google wants to be that person. Google wants to be the encyclopedia Britannica. They want to be the source that you know will get top-notch quality information. And if they're able to provide it, I think that's what they want to be able to do with SGE. And if they're not able to provide it, then they want to be able to provide it with high quality publishers, good quality people.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right? So the swing back around to affiliate marketers, if you see the entire trend on the web is going in X-direction and you're still operating in the opposite direction. It might work for a while, but you're fighting against a hurricane. It doesn't make any sense. And it might mean that you need to pivot, even though, in the short term you might see some dips in the revenue that you're bringing in. But you know what we're going to do now? We're going to pivot. We're going to pivot, ourselves, and hope there's no dip in our listenership as we do. Because he deserves all your ears. He is Barry Schwartz. And we are now pivoting to the Snappy SEO news.

Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. First up from Roger Monte over at Search Engine Journal. Google ends Video Carousel structured Data Test. So Google has removed the support for Video Host Carousel, which was a limited test it was doing, anyway. Google wrote that the reason why they're doing this is because, well, first off, they said "Removing Video Carousel", quote documentation what? "Removed Video Carousel guidance from the Video Structured Data Documentation, why? We initially tested video carousel market with a group of site owners, ultimately found that it wasn't useful for the ecosystem at scale. you can leave the markup on your site so that search engines and other systems can better understand your webpage.". So if you had a list of videos or multiple videos on a webpage that you had this markup that you could have added to make a show up as a carousel possibly on the SERP as a rich result, that is now being removed because Google said not good enough for us to support for the wider ecosystem, but Google rightfully so is recommending that you don't remove the markup.

There is added value to having that markup still on the page. So there's that. Next up, for on Barry Schwartz, over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google search test, thumbs up, down buttons in product grade results. We covered this also on It's New, our daily news video series with Barry. Which you can on the Wix SEO Hub as well. But basically Google was found testing at the bottom up, they have little cards for products. So you search for best shoes and you have all these little product cards that show up and a thumbs up, thumbs down saying, I do like these shoes, I don't like those shoes. Or another variation of the same thing within the product card. In this case, a pair of shoes. You had a little thing of more like this. I mean, I want to see more like this style. Obviously, what Google's trying to do is personalize the experience, which they have to do if they want to compete with Amazon.

Because if you go to Amazon, you get a whole heap of recommendations and customization and personalization rather within the Amazon ecosystem. So Google does want to be an ecosystem that rivals Amazon. This does seem like a logical direction for it to go in, and it's done so in the past in many other ways. From movie recommendations to what we saw reported on weeks ago, actually about style recommendations for you as well. Google has been trying and is trying to personalize the shopping experience for you in many ways, and this is just another continuation of that. Okay? Again, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google will fight site reputation abuse spam, both with manual actions and check this out, algorithms. So in May, Google said they're going to go after Parasite SEO, where you're basically posting content you can never hope to rank for on a more authoritative website that has nothing to do with the content that you're actually writing about.

Google has said that they're going to go after this, both with the spam algorithms, being automatically, but also with actual manual actions. Where Google will manually review the content and say, "Wow, that's really not good. That's spam.". Why is this website hosting this content that's got nothing to do with anything just for a couple of bucks? It's not good for anybody, other than the website earning a couple of bucks. Google said they're going to use again, manual reviews, manual actions for that. We saw with the October 2023 spam update. We haven't reached October 2024 yet have we? We saw they issued a heap of thousands of manual actions. I personally think we've seen Google do this in the past with the Penguin update. Google does seemingly train its spam algorithms on actual behavior, actual actions, actual manual human activity that happens in various ways, not just with manual actions.

Again, referencing Penguin of yesteryear. So it does seem to me like if they want to better train their algorithms around Parasite SEO, they might issue huge numbers of manual actions. If they do, if they rephrase this, if they are trying to train the algorithm here. Then you will probably see thousands of manual actions because you're going to need thousands of manual actions to better train their algorithm. I'm speculating that that's what's happening. I guess we will see come May when this goes live. So until then, don't do things that are spammy. And this has been this week's snappy news.

Crystal Carter:

Snap and turn.

Mordy Oberstein:

Snap and turn. And now we pivot back from the news. Back to the other parts of the podcast.

Crystal Carter:

I feel like I should grab my partner, Dosey Doe. I'm sorry. So we're going to pivot on the right and we're going to snap on the left with the Snappy news.

Mordy Oberstein:

I would love to do some, yeah, with Barry. All three of us to do a line dance if we pivot around.

Crystal Carter:

I'm not sure Barry dances. I'd be interested to know. Now I know that Mordy Oberstein dances. If you're wondering if Mordy Oberstein dances, please go to Brighton SEO Website.

Mordy Oberstein:

Go to the Brighton SEO website.

Crystal Carter:

Brighton San Diego, and you can see some of those top tier high quality dance moves.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hey, I got good hips.

Crystal Carter:

Like Shakira.

Mordy Oberstein:

I like to see Barry in a cowboy hat and boots. He wears a flannel already. I feel like the shirt's good to go. Needs a boots and a hat.

Crystal Carter:

I have cowboy boots.

Mordy Oberstein:

Bring them next time we see Barry.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll buy a cowboy hat for him.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Perfect. You know who else wears a cowboy hat? I don't know, but you know who else he should be following?

Crystal Carter:

Beyonce.

Mordy Oberstein:

Does she?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Also, I guess Garry Lewis, I assume I don't really know any cowboys. I assume they wear cowboy hats.

Crystal Carter:

Probably.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a good assumption. But you know who doesn't wear a cowboy hat? Who you should be following in social media, for more SEO O awesomeness, that would be Joshua Harding from Ahrefs and Si. Kwan Nang from Ahrefs, because both of them have written on the Ahrefs blog about affiliate marketing and SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Hey.

Mordy Oberstein:

I got that little pivot there.

Crystal Carter:

And the Ahrefs blog is such a great resource, and the team there, we've spoken to Patrick Stocks, and a few different guys.

Mordy Oberstein:

I think he's a booby.

Crystal Carter:

They've got some great content there. They're really open about their traffic and about visibility and about their methods as well. So they're a great resource for some high quality information around affiliate marketing and other things as well. So they're a prime example of how you can lead with quality. So obviously they are a brand blog and they have many things associated with their brand, but they're a prime example of somebody who's leading with value. And if you're interested in buying a thing as well, great, but they're leading with value.

Mordy Oberstein:

So make sure to give both Joshua Harding and Si Kwan Nang a follow over on X link, both of their profiles in the show notes. Ya, I don't know how we got from affiliate marketing and algorithm updates to Cowboys. That was a turn of events.

Crystal Carter:

Cowboy Carter album is coming out. It's going to be like a whole vibe.

Mordy Oberstein:

I never got into country. I like all sorts of music. I like jazz, I like rock. I even like a little bit of rap. Country never got me.

Crystal Carter:

I think in the nineties. You couldn't deny Shania Twain.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. Okay, so I was just going to go the opposite direction with that.

Crystal Carter:

Right?

Mordy Oberstein:

I was going to say, I think my problem is that in the nineties I could not escape Shania Twain.

Crystal Carter:

I'm sorry. When that song kicks in. I'm like, oh yeah, let's do it. So yeah, Shania Twain, Leanne Rimes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Leanne Rimes is great. I like Leanne Rimes.

Crystal Carter:

Reba McEntire. Okay, Faith Hill. Tim Mcgraw.

Mordy Oberstein:

I like Dolly Parton.

Crystal Carter:

Dolly Parton.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I'm not saying they're not great.

Crystal Carter:

Garth Brooks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Garth Brooks and Billy Joel did a bunch of stuff together. I think the Shania Twain thing has ruined the genre for me. Wow. Look at that.

Crystal Carter:

Wow. I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Very similar to me for Celine Dion. Who has ruined all of Celine Dion music.

Crystal Carter:

Whoa, I will not stand for Celine Slander on this podcast. I'm sorry. She's a queen. She's amazing. I'll not stand for Celine Slander if you don't have nice things to say about Celine. That's it, I won't.

Mordy Oberstein:

Agree to disagree.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, near, far, wherever you are. We're done with this podcast. Thanks for joining us on the Serves Up podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what should Google do with all that Reddit on the SERP. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check all the great content of webinars and resources on the Wix SEO learning about, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace of love and SEO.