Yesterday, Google announced that they were going to retire the Google Affiliate Network.
The final closure date has not been announced, but they said, “We’ll continue to support our customers as we wind down the product over the next few months.”
That leaves lots of affiliates in a position where they will need to change out links on their affiliate sites.
This can be an awesome task for any affiliates who have been pasting the affiliate code as is from the Google Affiliate Network advertisers.
But it won’t be so bad for any affiliates who have been using redirects for their affiliate links.
I started redirecting my affiliate links a good ten years or so ago – first through meta redirects, then via an .htaccess file, before I moved on to using a WordPress plugin called Pretty Link.
Additionally, I use the Custom Short Domain option on bitly, which is a free service that enables me to use my own domain to make redirect links. I use both aff.bz and affsum.it there.
Another option for affiliates using Google Affiliate Network is to get on board with Skimlinks.
Skimlinks has announced they are “releasing a full toolset to enable GAN publishers to switch advertiser links simply and easily.”