This is an interesting development:

Online Golf have an important announcement for all affiliates currently using the product feed available through Affiliate Window. Due to in depth SEO work currently being undertaken by Online Golf they will be removing the description column from their product feed as of 1st March 2007. This is to ensure that content on the Online Golf site is not replicated by other sites that might be promoting them.

I do wonder how this will be received by affiliates. Product feeds have become an important part of affiliate marketing, but with increased access to code it’s relatively easy for an affiliate to generate replicants of a merchant site either for SEO or PPC purposes.

As an affiliate I don’t work with Online Golf, but do use product feeds, albeit more and more we’re moving away from this area as it rarely seems to be a worthwhile exercise. Cutting product descriptions though does seem a bit of a strange move. On one hand it would mean affiliates having to provide their own, but if you’re reporting the wrong description that could be a serious advertising issue.

My feeling is that this cut by Online Golf could backfire a little, and see affiliates moving to other golf merchants who are happy to provide a full and detailed feed for them to work with. Let’s also hope that this is not the start of a trend in product feed affiliate marketing and that merchants, networks and affiliates work together to provide the best possible tools to generate sales.

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