How long until the hammer comes down on Amazon?

How long do you think it'll be before Google turns it's attention to Amazon and it's BH heavy affiliate pages? Up to now they've seem to been given a free-pass to the point that they (along with eBay) rule the 1st page. But as Google moves forward they will either need to at some point reconcile their algorithm with Amazon.

Remember, nothing is set in stone in SEO. I feel this one coming someday.......

The sooner it happens the better it will be everyone in SEO.

Amazon has the clout to show Google that they should not mess around with everyone.

Go google pick on someone your own size .... crush some amazon balls






amazon: sue google for being a monopoly and its bad practices. pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee


shhhh

I'd love to see it happen, but I don't expect it anytime soon. Google and Amazon are joined in the Internet Association cartel. Considering they are working together behind closed doors, I'm sure they have some sort of "understanding" that ensures they don't turn on each other.

I also believe that rel=canonical was adopted by Google to benefit Amazon. Rather than using noindex on affiliate generated URLs, or disallowing them with robots.txt, Amazon now can use rel=canonical to juice up their own non-affiliate pages. Before Google began supporting canonical and Amazon made the switch, there were far fewer Amazon products sitting in the top spots of Google. Although Google claims to know the major sites that use affiliate links, and allegedly deals with them accordingly, it's pretty clear they are not devaluing the links Amazon is getting from affiliates.

Amazon holds the highest rating of any major e-tailer. They recently spanked WalMart by ten full points in a customer satisfaction survey. That makes it even harder for anyone to negatively judge Amazon. While we know better, and have witnessed bogus reviews used across multiple products, I think Google needs Amazon at this point. If Amazon was flushed out of Google's SERPS, shoppers would quickly learn to visit Amazon first and bypass Google altogether. That would devalue Google's role and importance in product based search queries.

The Internet Association is the greatest threat to small businesses and affiliates. Although their mission statement claims that they are the voice of the internet economy, it's pretty clear that want to dominate this one trillion dollar a year industry by pushing small retailers/affiliates out of the system unless they pay. And these people must pay to either be in Adwords or a hefty percentage of each sale to Amazon if they choose to sell there. Either way, these powerhouses want their cut and will further squeeze small businesses to drive their own profits higher. For a global economy that has produced very little job growth, a forceful shift to a warehouse shopping experience for ordinary goods does not bode well for people that are looking for work.

Also keep in mind that Amazon's volume gives them quite a bit of clout in negotiating shipping rates. The fees that Amazon pays for freight further places small businesses at a competitive disadvantage when they too are selling the same products online. I've seen it happen a number of times personally. My sales were great until the manufacturer decided to sell on Amazon. Once that happened, sales plummeted because there simply was no way that I could compete when Amazon's margins were far greater than mine and their shipping fees far less. This puts small business employees out of work and replaces that with a single Amazon warehouse worker. And people wonder why the economy sucks ass.

I could go on with my rant, but the bottom line is that Google and Amazon are partners in the Internet Association. Knowing how these companies work, and how they both are squeezing retailers and affiliates, I'd say we have a legitimate reason to be concerned for what the future holds.

assphuck your spot on. Its the small businesses that are going to continue to get hurt.

Saying that tho could google end up cutting its nose of to spite its face?

Thanks maverickbiker.

What a lot of consumers/people don't realize is that selling product from a certain manufacturer requires a "buy in." In some cases the buy-in for wholesale distributor rates is small at around $5,000. For others, it can reach $50,000 or more. When product is moving, life is great. But when the manufacturer decides to start selling on Amazon, and Amazon undercuts everyone else, it sucks looking at tens of thousands of dollars worth of product sitting on a shelf collecting dust. It also sucks watching your shipping/receiving department slow down to the point where you have to let people go.

When product sits on the shelf collecting dust, because Amazon undercut all the other distributors, it wipes out all of the profit made before Amazon entered the mix. It sucks bad enough that so many products are made in China and other countries. But when people are buying them directly from Amazon, that compounds the problem of selling merchandise in the United States.

The only way I see to avoid the future problems resulting from Google driving traffic to Amazon's warehouse operation is to enter the service industry. I've yet to see how Google will monetize a laborers efforts tossing a shovel all day long. But I'm sure Google will try to figure that out too sometime in the future. And with no Federal Agency with the balls to say no, I question whether or not ordinary people will have any money to spend on services in the future anyway. That's the problem with a consolidation of wealth - the 800lb gorillas get all the money and everyone else gets banana peels.

As soon as new Jungle-Zebra-Zoo (you name it) update comes from dear mr. Matt

I view Amazon to online retailers as the the Super Walmart to B&M retailers. We get a phone call from Amazon about once a week begging us to list our products on their website. As a long time retailer and online marketer I learned the hard way the double edge sword of working your ass off to promote a 3rd party marketplace. Anyone foolish enough to list their products on Amazon only builds Amazon's brand and damages their own at the same time. eBay taught us this lesson 9 years ago.

I'll go out of business and start punching a time clock before I build Amazon any larger than they already are. Unfortunately there are too many idiots that consider themselves business people because they own a computer and can purchase wholesale. More of those type than real business men that know basic economics and marketing.

The advent of the Internet and high speed connections to the general public has spawned a plethora of business morons. Amazon and eBay reap the benefits of those morons and wouldn't exist today without them (at least not in the same capacity). While it would be nice to toss all the blame on the predatory beasts, the ignorant wholesalers and their resellers are just as much to blame for feeding and growing the beasts.

Amazon and eBay replaced our top spots in the SERPS for many of our top keywords costing us a ton of money but I won't list our products on their websites regardless of how often they call.

Nothing in this Country is more resilient than the small business owner. Big business (and recently Government) has been trying to crush us for as long as I can remember. Our greatest tool is being agile. Large business is like a 1000 ton locomotive rolling down the tracks. You get in front of them and they'll crush you in a second. Small business is like a guy on a bicycle. He sees a train coming and simply turns another direction. The train can't change course as easily.

As long as you keep rolling and avoiding the path of the trains you'll do great. Plenty of markets for small business owners that are very profitable but not worth the investment of big business to chase. That's where the money is.

Thanks for your guys' insight on this

I support Amazon actually.
The United States is actually monopolized by a select few individuals. The rothchilds, rockefellers, and etc. These select few have control of senators, government facilities, music, news and etc. The people below that are affiliated with them own various stores, malls and etc. Google and Amazon are actually the competitors of these people. Amazon is actually losing because they are getting taxed for their affiliate sales on various states. Amazon is losing the battle in congress. It is kind of funny because most affiliate companies do not get taxed for their affiliate sales. Only Amazon.

Google and Amazon are big. However, they will never get as big as the rothchilds, or chase bank. So even if Amazon gets big, I will support it. Because right now, the world is actually monopolized by a select few organizations but it is just not in the headlines or news because they are so big they can suppressed media, news and information.

kvmcable said:

Anyone foolish enough to list their products on Amazon only builds Amazon's brand and damages their own at the same time. eBay taught us this lesson 9 years ago.

Click to expand...

I sell on Amazon and I have to disagree. Being on Amazon has increased our brand's image. There's instant credibility in the consumer's eyes for products being sold on Amazon. Remember, Amazon recently topped the customer satisfaction list... the public loves to buy on Amazon. If your product is on there, you get that reciprocal benefit.

Amazon and eBay replaced our top spots in the SERPS for many of our top keywords costing us a ton of money but I won't list our products on their websites regardless of how often they call.

Click to expand...

Why wouldn't you sell on Amazon if you can keep your margins the same? Your volume of sales would continue to increase being in front of Amazon's traffic.

it's not going to happen. Both companies are on the same page as far as religion goes. Look at their donations. They are like monks from the same monestary. It's very obvious what both of their agendae are.

They have started deleting blogger.com (blogspot.com) that put amazon aff link.

dragonrage01 said:

I support Amazon actually.
The United States is actually monopolized by a select few individuals. The rothchilds, rockefellers, and etc. These select few have control of senators, government facilities, music, news and etc. The people below that are affiliated with them own various stores, malls and etc. Google and Amazon are actually the competitors of these people. Amazon is actually losing because they are getting taxed for their affiliate sales on various states. Amazon is losing the battle in congress. It is kind of funny because most affiliate companies do not get taxed for their affiliate sales. Only Amazon.

Google and Amazon are big. However, they will never get as big as the rothchilds, or chase bank. So even if Amazon gets big, I will support it. Because right now, the world is actually monopolized by a select few organizations but it is just not in the headlines or news because they are so big they can suppressed media, news and information.

Click to expand...

There are countrys like russia or china where the powerful people look very closely on the big webpages in the country. This newcomer are a real danger for them.
in my opinion google is the most powerful company at the moment - they can influence the next election if they want, so i am sure everywhere the old money empires will do everything that this companys dont get too powerful or make sure that they can control them long term.

Things will only end for IM'ers when stores find a way to generate better sales for them than we can.

I'm sorry, but we're some of Amazon and Google's best "employees"

They love us. They hate that they love us.

Just remember, if you're going to link to Amazon use a condom (personally use post-via-javascript to a page that is off limits to Google via robots.txt). Otherwise you're just making their ability to outrank you all that much stronger.

I don't think Amazon is going anywhere, Google props up brands. I remember watching some Matt Cutts video one time about some affiliate of amazon wondering why he can't rank as well as amazon, and Matt responded something to the effect of (paraphrased) "Why should you rank as well as amazon when amazon has all this great content, what additional thing are you doing that you should rank?" The gist there being that Google thinks Amazon has great content.

Right now Google is pushing people out of the top 10 results. Slowly but surely they're reducing your ability to be in the top 10, whether its auto-fixing wikipedia and amazon at the top of many product names, or reducing the result set to 7 instead of 10, or google shopping results, or injecting google places (a big circle jerk to keep you inside Google), or having 100% ads above-the-fold ... you're getting pushed out.

Why? Because they're focusing on brands. Amazon is a brand. You are not a brand. Later on when Google introduces its own brands that it always features at the top of results ... of course they're not being biased, look at Amazon (its a brand) brands are just better! 2 years from now when nobody is in the top 10, its just Amazon and big brands ... those big brands won't cry as hard about Google competing with them. Us little peons will have already been long gone, so we won't be complaining as much.

dragonrage01 said:

I support Amazon actually.
The United States is actually monopolized by a select few individuals. The rothchilds, rockefellers, and etc. These select few have control of senators, government facilities, music, news and etc. The people below that are affiliated with them own various stores, malls and etc. Google and Amazon are actually the competitors of these people. Amazon is actually losing because they are getting taxed for their affiliate sales on various states. Amazon is losing the battle in congress. It is kind of funny because most affiliate companies do not get taxed for their affiliate sales. Only Amazon.

Google and Amazon are big. However, they will never get as big as the rothchilds, or chase bank. So even if Amazon gets big, I will support it. Because right now, the world is actually monopolized by a select few organizations but it is just not in the headlines or news because they are so big they can suppressed media, news and information.

Click to expand...

Dragonrage01, Eric Schmidt (Chairman of Google with a reported net worth of $7.5 Billion) campaigned for Obama in 2008 and has traveled to Washington D.C. so many times since then that some speculated Schmidt was going to get nominated for a cabinet post. Some also speculate that the Obama pressured the FTC to drop their case against Google because of his close relationship with Schmidt. Just search Google for Eric Schmidt and Obama and you will find a ton of information about these two.

Amazon and Google are already huge - and they are expanding into other markets as aggressively as they can. It's impossible to compare these companies to the likes of Chase Bank or other large financial institutions because one group has holds many assets while the other (Google) has a broad market influence. Google, in particular, can impact consumer trends with a simple keystroke that shuts out smaller enterprises that rely on ecommerce for their survival. And this is exactly what Google has done.

While Google has given cute names (Panda, Penguin) to algorithm changes that have shut many small businesses out of organic search, the main benefactors have been members of the Google lead Internet Association. 9 out of the top 10 members in this group, as I refer to as a cartel, saw the most traffic from organic search. This should not surprise anyone because they are working together under the guise of a trade association.

If you are concerned about the nation/world being monopolized by a few people, then supporting Google and Amazon should run contrary to your beliefs. These two organizations have forced many small businesses to close their doors and many employees to lose their jobs.

it is google #1 strategy to push up big sites and push down small ones

so small ones pays for ads, big ones display ads , and google makes profit

phpbuilt said:

Just remember, if you're going to link to Amazon use a condom (personally use post-via-javascript to a page that is off limits to Google via robots.txt). Otherwise you're just making their ability to outrank you all that much stronger.

I don't think Amazon is going anywhere, Google props up brands. I remember watching some Matt Cutts video one time about some affiliate of amazon wondering why he can't rank as well as amazon, and Matt responded something to the effect of (paraphrased) "Why should you rank as well as amazon when amazon has all this great content, what additional thing are you doing that you should rank?" The gist there being that Google thinks Amazon has great content.

Right now Google is pushing people out of the top 10 results. Slowly but surely they're reducing your ability to be in the top 10, whether its auto-fixing wikipedia and amazon at the top of many product names, or reducing the result set to 7 instead of 10, or google shopping results, or injecting google places (a big circle jerk to keep you inside Google), or having 100% ads above-the-fold ... you're getting pushed out.

Why? Because they're focusing on brands. Amazon is a brand. You are not a brand. Later on when Google introduces its own brands that it always features at the top of results ... of course they're not being biased, look at Amazon (its a brand) brands are just better! 2 years from now when nobody is in the top 10, its just Amazon and big brands ... those big brands won't cry as hard about Google competing with them. Us little peons will have already been long gone, so we won't be complaining as much.

Click to expand...

completey correct
that is why google results sucks so bad recently and increases the sucking rate

many almost duplicate pages from same domain displayed even for big volume keywords

Google normally likes to go vs small guys like us. I doubt they wanna fight with someone that is as big as they are lol.

But yeah it's a good idea to wipe those Amazon results out of the searches a little bit.

If you do a search for product keywords you would probably see 1-3 Amazon pages on page 1. That's kinda of unfair.

Well one of my amazon affiliate sites was de indexed and classified as a "doorway page". They can mess around with all of our affiliate sites, but I doubt they will mess with amazon.