Does Google hate affiliate marketers? ‘Hate’ may be a little extreme but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Google doesn’t want websites and web pages in its search engine index that it believes add no value to – or junk up – its search results. Unfortunately for many affiliate marketers, Google interprets many affiliate sites as doing exactly that.

Affiliate marketers have long suspected Google’s ire towards them, whether as a result of seeing their sites removed from Google’s index or of having to pay exorbitant pay-per-click costs to advertise in Google Adwords. Recently, a proprietary Google document surfaced on the Internet and in affiliate marketing circles that put all such doubts to rest. The document – which Google has subsequently sought to remove from those who have published it – indicates that Google distrusts, devalues and may even de-index websites that do little more than promote affiliate products or services.

Google’s latest search engine algorithm will impact 35 percent of search engine searches, according to Google Fellow Amit Singal. Hint: it’s all about recency AND relevancy.

Google announced its new ranking algorithm change last Thursday. It builds on the Caffeine web indexing system, which Google introduced in 2010 to allow the search engine to quickly crawl and index the Internet for fresh content on a much larger scale than before.

According to a recent survey of 1,745 business-to-business (B2B) Internet marketers, even the most effective B2B marketing tactics – such as website design, SEO and email marketing – were up to 50 percent LESS effective in 2011 compared with last year.

According to Marketing Sherpa, which conducted the survey, the upshot is that online marketers need to radically improve their game in order to meet the demands of B2B customers in the current economic environment.

Research from Slingshot SEO indicates that the top spot on the organic listings on Google gets 18.2 percent of all click-throughs, while the second spot gets 10.05 percent and the third position gets 7.22 percent.

Diverging from a recent study by Optify which indicates that the top spot yields 36.4 percent of clicks (http://www.kikabink.com/news/top-spot-on-google-gets-36-percent-of-clicks/) – Slingshot SEO’s ‘Mission ImposSERPble: Establishing Google Click-Through Rates’ research is based on a 6 month study.

Google may have the biggest search engine share overall, but when it comes to specific industries or verticals, Bing or Yahoo may generate a disproportionate amount of organic search traffic.

In other words, Bing or Yahoo may generate more traffic to websites in certain verticals than their overall search engine market share might otherwise suggest. Consequently, depending on your industry, lifting your Bing or Yahoo search engine rank might actually be more effective in increasing the volume of traffic to your site than a corresponding lift in your Google rank.

According to Ryan Beldham, founder of MyWebRevolution.com, Google is a monopoly. In this interview, I asked Ryan why he thinks Google is a monopoly and what he thinks should be done about it. As a libertarian and fan of free markets I still think people are free to do business with Google or go elsewhere. What about you? Do you agree with Ryan? Share your thoughts in the Comments.

Anna: Why do you consider Google to be a monopoly?

Ryan: This is not an easy question to answer and is really the basis of my entire argument. But to try and sum it up, you must first know how to define a monopoly. I define it as a product or service that has exclusive control in its market space, and, must control the prices set in that market. It is important to note that this is a two-fold definition and gives a set of criteria for determining what a monopoly is.

Where do U.S. hotels, bed and breakfasts (B & Bs) and innkeepers spend most of their marketing budgets these days? If you’re involved in the travel industry – or have recently researched or booked travel – you’ll know the answer: on the Internet!

Of the three biggest marketing expenses among accommodation businesses, the biggest expense is online advertising and the third is online travel agency commissions.

Hotel brand managers should impose stricter terms on their affiliates and channel partners, who, according to MarkMonitor, are ‘brandjacking’ hotels to the tune of $1.9 billion in lost annual online bookings.

Based on recent research conducted by the firm, MarkMonitor reckons affiliates – particularly hotel aggregators – are effectively ‘brandjacking’ hotels by bidding on hotel brand terms in the search engines. According to MarkMonitor’s research, affiliates are costing the hotel industry around $1.9 billion in lost annual online bookings.

Google recently introduced Instant Pages, a new feature of its Chrome web browser that will pre-render the web page of the top search result before you visit it. In other words, after you perform a search, Google will get the web page of the first search result ready for you, before you even click on that result.

Google says it will only pre-render a web page where it has ‘very high confidence’ that it’s what a search engine user is looking for. How will Google develop such confidence? According to Google software engineer, Ziga Mahkovec:

comScore’s May 2011 U.S. search engine rankings shows no real change in the market shares of the major search engines.

Google retained its market share leadership with a 65.5 percent market share (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by Yahoo! with 15.9 percent and Microsoft/Bing with 14.1 percent. Ask Network accounted for 2.9 percent, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.5 percent.