Amazon Change SEO Policies For UK Affiliates

Date: 12 Jan 2010

UK sites who are official affiliate partners of Amazon.com will have to re-think their online
search strategy, as Amazon have put new guidelines in place curtailing the types of online
advertising permitted through their affiliate programme.

Through an email communication to all affiliate partners, Amazon informed them that they
will no longer be accepting traffic coming from paid search ads as legitimate affiliate
referrals. Links coming from paid ads on Google, Bing or Yahoo from campaigns set up by Amazon
affiliates are no longer acceptable - and will not generate any revenue for the affiliates.
In addition, Amazon will also no longer accept referrals generated from Amazon-related tags in
organic search results from affiliate sites. For a referral to be legitimate, the affiliate
must drive users to Amazon from their own site, and not from search results.

The change in referral policy for Amazon affiliates comes into effect from February 1st 2010,
following a similar change to the US network of Amazon affiliates last year.