SEO Companies Sighed with Relief

When Google took action towards buying DoubleClick, SEM industry felt itself seriously affected and even threatened. The acquisition deal which was finally closed on March 11th this year brought Performics as a division of DoubleClick into Gloogle’s property. Performics is one of the biggest affiliate networks. Together with affiliate services it provides search engine marketing and search engine optimization services that help clients to be better ranked on search engines. The industry fears derived from the real possibility Performics to take advantage of Google’s algorithm which would make their services more effective and would take them ahead of the other SEM providers.

The conflict of interests Google had faced found its expected solution: Google announced to sell Performics.

Tom Phillips, director of DoubleClick integration at Google, wrote on the company’s official blog:

“It’s clear to us that we do not want to be in the search engine marketing business. Maintaining objectivity in both search and advertising is paramount to Google’s mission and core to the trust we ask from our users. For this reason, we plan to sell the Performics search marketing business to a third party. We believe this will allow us to maintain objectivity and the search marketing business to continue to grow and innovate and serve its customers. While we have not yet identified a buyer, we’ve received preliminary interest from a number of our current partners. Search Marketing will continue to run as a separate entity until the division is sold.”

On the other hand, Google definitely intends to keep the affiliate marketing part of Performics, which helps advertisers establish networks of web sites that can refer customers to them.

“We plan to integrate the affiliate marketing business into existing Google operations, providing enhanced value and reach for our affiliate advertisers, and additional tools and monetization opportunities for our publishers.”

While all the concerns and worries of internet marketing companies in conclusion turned out to be in vain, now the affiliate networks will have to make every endeavor to withstand the strong competition and to find new effective approaches to oppose to Google’s dominance.