This morning, Amazon notified their affiliates that they will no longer be allowing paid search traffic to be directed to Amazon through their Associates program.
We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks.
This goes into effect on May 1st, 2009.
While I’m certain that the people at Amazon have done a very thorough analysis that makes this the right decision for them, what kind of reaction will this cause in the Affiliate space? Will a number of other merchants take this as a sign that they should do the same without a thorough analysis?
Is this is an example of where an industry organization can help define best practices and help define when it is better for merchants to allow paid search bidding or not in their own program? We hope that merchants participate in industry forums and conferences, but I think the industry could do more to get together and define best practices.
Read the FAQ at Amazon for more details on the impact this has on your affiliate activity in their program. There are important impacts to access to product datafeeds.
