March 2009

Dear Google Shopping Staff Members,

You have wisely excluded affiliates and drop-shippers from eligibility for product displays in Google Products/Shopping. The program policies include:

“Note: Google Base doesn’t permit posting to promote affiliate sites or products sold through an affiliate marketing relationship”

 

and 

 

“Posting is not permitted for the promotion of affiliate sites, products sold through a commission-based relationship, or sites that sell through cataloged third-party drop-shipping programs.”

Since Google Products (Shopping) includes tens of thousands of items from floral wire service affiliates, whose ‘local delivery’ is akin to catalog drop-shipping (third-party fulfillment), I’ve concluded you folks simply do not know the difference between actual product providers and affiliate/drop-shippers when it comes to flower delivery, so I’d like to explain….

Three Companies Basically Own the Florist-Delivered Affiliate Networks

The vast majority of florist designed product images seen in Google Shopping are either owned by FTD,  

Teleflora or 1-800-Flowers (BloomNet)  (Follow the links for current examples).

The multiple postings of the products by different affiliates should make all this pretty apparent, although it looks as if many have wised up and changed the product names or product numbers. 

Occasionally, an affiliate reseller with post what appears to be a ‘unique’ product image, even if it’s just lifted (i.e. stolen) from a local florist’s site like this one was from my own company…. but regardless of where they come from, all those items are commission-based, sold by affiliates and delivered by third-party fulfillment companies – i.e. local brick and mortar florists. 

The sellers never touch the products nor control the inventory, and simply take commissions while passing the orders on to other stores.  It’s pretty clear that outside of the original image copyright holders, every other listing is a violation of Google Products’ stated policies.

Why Google Shopping Policies Matter to Local Florists

Local flower shops are not permitted to have our own arrangements listed in Google Products if we indicate our actual locations, so the real providers of the products are excluded from being listed at all.  The system is set up to make local florists bend the truth * a lot* if we want our flowers to appear there.

Over a year ago, I blogged about how consumers miss out on the very best florist-delivered values (and how they also get sold items which will never get delivered ‘as shown’). 

With Shopping/Products items now appearing in Google’s Universal Search, at least one third-party Florida based Teleflora affiliate reseller is getting top billing by keyword stuffing geographic terms into the flower product titles.

See Paragould, AR

And Dayton, NV

for but two of the tens of thousands of examples.

So Google Shopping staffers, I hope this post helps show ‘what an affiliate is’ when it comes to hand-delivered flower arrangement sales, and why local florists hope you will enforce your own policies and clean out the listings of affiliate resellers, especially the geographic spammers.

Mike Blumenthal talked about the possibility of Google using the data from Google Base in Local/Maps and that sure sounds good to us local flower shop owners – as long as the spammers don’t overrun the brick and mortar businesses.   

Ideally, we local florists hope you will allow us to list (and you will display) our own unique products based on our locations and service areas, but until that time, please don’t let affiliates crowd out the companies who really do deliver the flower arrangements – we local florists.  

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