Comments on: Please Can You Tell Me Why Click To Reveal Is Allowed?

By: IAB Unveil Voucher Codes Best Practice … What Next? | One Little Duck - Affiliate Blog

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:53:32 +0000

[...] wonder if this includes a toolbar that flashes “discount codes” when there aren’t [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:35:53 +0000

Interesting… wonder how networks and merchants will view this (especially those who are running other campaigns and may get sales hijacked)… although you could say that it’s a bit like the rebate catcher that Greasypalm use I guess (although that only pops up when the site is offering cashback – and not as I understand within an alternative affiliate cookie session).

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:22:54 +0000

Have you seen the latest tactic?

Myvouchercodes has a firefox toolbar for download. Flashes yellow with “Discounts found, click here”, even when there aren’t any. It says there are discounts for sunshine.co.uk, but there aren’t any. Same with lots of other sites.

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:29:42 +0000

I think this is a great post Jason. Not only is this method unfair on other affiliates; it is misleading for our customers and ultimately their experience is what everything should revolve around.

Thomas Cook don’t use voucher codes through the affiliate space at present; and so in the summer we changed our T&C’s forbidding click to reveal. I am optimistic that almost all the voucher sites we work with are now compliant, though if you spot anyone not compliant, let me know!

By: Magazine Subscriptions

Magazine Subscriptions — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:38:29 +0000

I’ve always found these websites misleading as they mostly never have any valid voucher codes. There are plenty of websites that now advertise on google adwords with the empty promise of exclusive discounts which are just lies. This is fraudulent.

Cheers

Mally

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:29:57 +0000

There is no chance of Google penalising ‘click to reveal’ sites, the affiliate industry needs to sort this one out.

By: Russell - Mega.co.uk

Russell - Mega.co.uk — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:59:02 +0000

I started dev of a voucher codes site and have paused the development because I’m not sure about this click to reveal thing and especially talk of google penalising sites. On one hand I’d hate to use click to reveal – but I’m not sure you could compete with PPC unless you do it.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:36:42 +0000

“Tell Me Why Click To Reveal Is Allowed?”

It makes networks lots of money.

By: How Make Money

How Make Money — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:36:59 +0000

Interesting to hear the views of the merchants in this discussion.

My opinion is that it will be Google who will be first to punish the offending sites, rather than the networks!

By: Jason B

Jason B — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:51:47 +0000

I don’t understand how Google allow these sites to dominate the search results when there are clearly no codes available for the majority of merchants listed. It’s not providing users with relevant results, and should therefore penalise these sites for the practice.

I have taken to sending in a results not relevant report when I can’t find a code on a page that I was looking for. It seems perhaps that others should do the same. Someone at Google will then see the reports and at least should review the sites in question, at best remove them from the serps altogether.

As far as click to reveal practice, this is something the networks need to stamp out, it is a forced click in every sense of the term. There is of course the possibility of action under the Trade Descriptions act – but that would take a possibly expensive test case to prove.