Comments on: Blackhat Affiliate MapSpam – Is it a Crime?

By: Affiliate marketing guy -Ron Davies

Affiliate marketing guy -Ron Davies — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:45:03 +0000

I would tend to disagree. A paid search engine listing is a paid se listing. Why would a clever affiliate be treated punitively when he is sending traffic to the Marriott (in this case), and paying the the advertising. Either way, Marriott gets the business the affiliate paid for, albeit less a commission.

Note also that it is within Yahoos control to manage this if they wanted to, as you cannot do the same thing on Google. Yahoo could adopt the same position on it as Google, and has not.

It is not criminal, it is clever. And for those on thepunitive side still, the other news is that the easrth is not flat, and a human will not fly apart at 60 miles per hour, and to boot, women have the right to vote!

Imagine!

Have a great day #;>)

Ron

By: Affiliate Marketing Guide

Affiliate Marketing Guide — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:27:32 +0000

Hi Linda, I totally agree with you.

This practice is not admirable.

Problem is affiliate marketing is unregulated and we like it that way. If the black hatters, spammers, whatever you wish to call them keep this up, government bodies will step all over us

By: Online Marketing

Online Marketing — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:53:43 +0000

I would call it marketing. Whether its “honest” is a relative term. Yahoo needs to police their property or suffer being gamed, and as a result a negative user experience, and hence a bad product and less traffic. It’s yahoo’s problem and they suffer for it as a result.

By: Linda Buquet

Linda Buquet — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:48:02 +0000

“What is the world coming to when Linda Buquet is calling out “black hat” techniques?”

I often have in the past and still do. I’m totally supportive of affiliates making money any way that’s legal, ethical, not spamming and not stealing commissions from another affiliate or the merchant. This is stealing money from the merchant.

“I wouldn’t even call this black hat.”

Would you call it honest?

SEL said “Mapspam is where black hat SEOs spam local search and map listings” and I agreed. Maybe black hat isn’t the right term (technically), but it’s dishonest and the fact that this person is doing it on a large scale on lots of different listings makes it pretty bad.

By: Banner Blindness

Banner Blindness — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:04:32 +0000

What is the world coming to when Linda Buquet is calling out “black hat” techniques? I wouldn’t even call this black hat.