Google Algorithm Updates - 2023 Ongoing Discussion

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I've been adding "reddit" to a lot of my searches for a while now. Then I see stuff like this:

The first page results for some of my best ranking keywords are all quora posts, reddit posts, very old forum posts, and very old and poorly written blogs.

Pretty much John is stating that the website in the SERPs were trash and people were adding "reddit" to the end of their queries and so this update simply fixed that:


I've seen multiple times that people admit on this forum that they add reddit cause results are trash, so here we are.

Now are the websites with 100 ADs, pop-ups, interstitials, no images, and low quality trash? Yeah. But the other side of thinking is that Google for a long time has been degrading the SERPs so low quality websites were the results, now we are forced to put in "reddit" or in my case "stackoverflow" to get results we want.

They seem to be fixing the symptoms instead of trying to cure the reason for the pain/headache. But maybe the websites dropping really do have bad user experiences.

Either way, if you only have Google traffic, you answer to Google.
 
now we are forced to put in "reddit" or in my case "stackoverflow" to get results we want.
So I've been trying to think of other brands where-in people append them to the end of their searches - literally all I could think of is reddit and stackoverflow; Maybe that's because of the limited scope of my searches.

Genuinely curious here - are there other brands that folks are appending to their searches? Ie. When you go to search for something, are you appending "Query + Brand" to your searches?

For instance, Guga Foods is a good example; Guga crushes on YT with multiple channels but has no written form for any of his videos. Googling any of his "recipes" alongside his name or "brand" - you won't find his site because he doesn't have one (dude is leaving a fair bit on the table I'd wager).

Personally, I don't use reddit - but I grew up a forum kid and even still, I'd never search for something IM related and append say "BuSo" to it <--- That style of Query though is how a "search engine" works (at least to me) and the issue seems to be google wanting to be an "answer engine" instead (which is likely the intention of SGE).

Of the reddit threads or "hidden gem" forums I was replaced with, the results are pretty pig shit if I'm honest. I will say, some are solid and feature sound advice but they're few and far between and also leave little to be desired in the way of a thought provoking answer. Even in some cases the user was [deleted] and the answer outdated but upvoted - so it must be true.

The above is also a weird precedent to set.

This band-aid solution is only going to lead to:
  1. Manipulated reddit results and boards - I mean parasite SEO is a real thing and sending links to domains that Google likes is easy pickins'. You can be aggressive with anchors on tier 2 too and get away with it because of the size of the site.
  2. Upvotes and "likes" to get the top comment are easily manipulated; Not to mention wayyy cheaper than backlinks.
  3. You can easily buy aged accounts on any of these platforms; Christ I bet I could find a seller on BHW right now with a 10+ year old account and good karma on reddit, quora, xyz forum, etc. Again, cheaper than a backlink.
  4. Lots of new UGC/forums filled with AI talking to each other.
  5. Far more fake personas.
It's like CCarter said though, treating the symptoms rather than finding the cure - they don't know how to combat mass AI sites, so they'll give you UGC and hope moderators of boards do their jobs for them.

It'll also be interesting to correlate Raterhub visits and see how they find the results of their algorithm - I know as soon as I see a visit I'll be marking my calendar 2 weeks from the date.

Something I've noticed is that my bounce rate is up and time on site has gone down vs before with my bounce rate being low and time on site being high; Almost like the people finding me with their query aren't satisfied :smile:
 
are there other brands that folks are appending to their searches?
PornHub, XVideo, Amazon, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, Urban Dictionary, the word "meme" or "gif", Imgur...

You guys have to think like consumer of different niches and industry. Think of some sister, aunt, brother, uncle - how do they use the internet when looking stuff up?
 
I personally agree with John Mu, that whole swaths of queries have turned to shit because of ads, particularly anything tech related, even coding related these days, is completely innundated with "content sites" that are written by third world writers.

It's an absolute shit experience and everyone should take notice to not make such a website.

On the other hand, there's absolutely no use of 9/10 big brand affiliate reviews. They're pure listicle trash, they never tried the products, they don't even include stats or bother quoting experts.

Likewise with Reddit, it's not all gold. A lot of reddit results are ancient in the serps and a lot of them are just people going "I like Nike" or "I like Reebok".

The thing with reddit is that while it's not great info, at least it is mostly unbiased and honest and the user experience is good (no ads).

That's the thing, if this kind of business is to succeed, it has to be more like reddit: Unbiased, honest and based on user experience.

I know it hurts, but content sites plastered with ads, like many of you are running, is often not a good user experience.

What's the answer? Less aggressive ad placement, fewer but better content, more repeat visitors etc. Content which is legitimately helpful and interesting. Content tailored to the query. Short or long, text heavy or image heavy, data driven or creative.

Of course, it's a catch-22 because in order to invest heavily in doing these things, you have to be able to assume that Google will reward the effort and for the last 5 years, Google has simply not done that.

This is imo, Google putting itself in this situation by so blatantly promoting legacy media (and by proxy high DR domains).

The reason they did this was to manipulate the serps so certain political topics would not show up. You might be able to remember that before 2018, you were able to find all kinds of fascinating blogs in the Google serps, based on links and engagements, where as now you have 5 pages of mainstream magazines and then nothing. Where as in the past, you really had those hyper focused blogs that made up a lot of what people thought the internet was.

TL/DR: Mass publish content sites are not a good user experience, but they're a response, quantity over quality, to Google killing off the visibility for the passionate niche blog.
 
I personally agree with John Mu, that whole swaths of queries have turned to shit because of ads, particularly anything tech related, even coding related these days, is completely innundated with "content sites" that are written by third world writers.

It's an absolute shit experience and everyone should take notice to not make such a website.

On the other hand, there's absolutely no use of 9/10 big brand affiliate reviews. They're pure listicle trash, they never tried the products, they don't even include stats or bother quoting experts.

Likewise with Reddit, it's not all gold. A lot of reddit results are ancient in the serps and a lot of them are just people going "I like Nike" or "I like Reebok".

The thing with reddit is that while it's not great info, at least it is mostly unbiased and honest and the user experience is good (no ads).

That's the thing, if this kind of business is to succeed, it has to be more like reddit: Unbiased, honest and based on user experience.

I know it hurts, but content sites plastered with ads, like many of you are running, is often not a good user experience.

What's the answer? Less aggressive ad placement, fewer but better content, more repeat visitors etc. Content which is legitimately helpful and interesting. Content tailored to the query. Short or long, text heavy or image heavy, data driven or creative.

Of course, it's a catch-22 because in order to invest heavily in doing these things, you have to be able to assume that Google will reward the effort and for the last 5 years, Google has simply not done that.

This is imo, Google putting itself in this situation by so blatantly promoting legacy media (and by proxy high DR domains).

The reason they did this was to manipulate the serps so certain political topics would not show up. You might be able to remember that before 2018, you were able to find all kinds of fascinating blogs in the Google serps, based on links and engagements, where as now you have 5 pages of mainstream magazines and then nothing. Where as in the past, you really had those hyper focused blogs that made up a lot of what people thought the internet was.

TL/DR: Mass publish content sites are not a good user experience, but they're a response, quantity over quality, to Google killing off the visibility for the passionate niche blog.
I kind of agree with John Mu too. I must admit I sometimes add "reddit" to my search querries too..., but only if I want personal stories or experiences. I definitely don't do it when I am looking for something serious, like "my dog is sick" or "how to spot counterfeit dollars".

And this is where my #1 complaint comes from. If Google puts reddit and quora posts in the top spots, where is their EEAT guideline? What is EEAT applicable for? Why put user generated content on top positions?

Most content on reddit and quora is coming from anonymous users, they are not experts, and A LOT of it is "I think that..." or "in my experience...". It's purely anecdotal, subjective, and too personal.

Let's say you have a blog about tourist visas for Singapore citizens traveling to Europe. Google decides to replace your blog posts with reddit comments, which are similar to "Yeah, when I went to Austria they didn't need that signature, but I heard others who needed it". This type of information is too anecdotal, unreliable, and doesn't provide value.

My take is - when users WANT reddit information, they already use reddit in their querries. When they don't want reddit, they should NOT get automatic results from reddit.
 
John Mu and Google are acting all high and mighty by saying that content sites with ads plastered all over it are shit.

Did they forget that their own adsense business model is to plaster ads all over the content sites and hoping users fking click on it?

Perhaps the problem isn't site builders, but rather Google should change their method of monetary incentives for creators to create.

After all, Google is not in the content creation business. They PARASITE off of creators' works to display their ADs on it to make money. Parasite SEO at its finest.

Imagine a world where all creators ceased creation today. Where would google be the next day?
 
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Imagine a world where all creators ceased creation today. Where would google be the next day?
I like this thought experiment. If we're talking about ALL content creators, big and small, all mediums, then they'd just get rid of their freshness bias and turn into the search engine they should have been all along. This is if the internet simply froze in state and it was all read-only, download-only with no more user input at all in any fashion.

If we're only talking about small content creators stopping text-based content, Google would just continue on pushing big brands and the internet will continue to "get smaller".

But realistically those small creators would move to another medium like video, VR, or metaverse content, and Google would alter itself to include some of that, and because attention and ad budgets would shift in that direction because the people would choose it, the big brands would soon follow. And we'd be right back to the same nonsense.

Youtube, Rumble, Kick, Twitch, and all these other video based platforms that incentivize creators are the immediate future. Long-form content has it's place still, despite the bite-sized short-form TikTok, Instagram, Shorts, and even clips on Facebook performing massively well. They do perform massively well but there's not a lot of value there, with RPM's being as low as $0.01. The real currency in those is attention and sponsorship deals, and making people aware you have long-form content so when they're in the mood (they aren't when on those platforms), they'll know to seek you out. Pinterest and Instagram will have their utility for a while, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth 1,000 x 24 frames per second.

After all, Google is not in the content creation business. They PARASITE off of creators' works to display their ADs on it to make money.
Yeah, to this day I always think about Google wanting people to not scrape their results... the irony.

PornHub, XVideo, Amazon, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, Urban Dictionary, the word "meme" or "gif", Imgur...
I'd say another big one is Youtube for people that still refuse to download the app. Especially since Youtube shitted up their search results. You get like 3 results, then crap like "You'd also like this from other niches unrelated to your search term" and "Other people watched" and "Rewatch these" and all that crap. Which might look okay on desktop but it makes the mobile search results nearly worthless trying to disambiguate it all and having to scroll endlessly to get back to real results.
 
I've seen multiple times that people admit on this forum that they add reddit cause results are trash, so here we are.

Now are the websites with 100 ADs, pop-ups, interstitials, no images, and low quality trash? Yeah. But the other side of thinking is that Google for a long time has been degrading the SERPs so low quality websites were the results, now we are forced to put in "reddit" or in my case "stackoverflow" to get results we want.

They seem to be fixing the symptoms instead of trying to cure the reason for the pain/headache
Came here to say exactly this for that exact thread. Rehighlighting it. Seems like causation correlation their team has made such a spaghetti code mess of the Algo it's gotten so bad the only way to fix it is to not fix it and lean into reddit.
 
I'm actually embarrassed to see people here take John Mu's comments seriously. No offense, but i thought we were smarter than this?

John Mu and his cohorts are distractions that Google uses to keep us away from the truth. I mean, when last have they given you truly helpful statements/ answers to questions, and the answers are consistent with tests/what we're actually seeing in the SERPS?

See an example that came out today: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-no-longer-a-top-three-ranking-factor-36094.html - Do you really believe this? Is it consistent with what you're seeing in the SERPS today?

Also, John Mu already seems to have a disdain for content websites (Isn't he supposed to be "neutral" ) so i'm not sure what y'all are expecting him to say.

This reddit thing is a distraction and its easier for him to play along (blame shitty content sites) than to tell you what they're actually doing. Heck! he's just a voice for them and may not even know what's really going on

Also, i don't believe that reddit queries are the solely the result of bad SERPS. It could also be that the searcher only prefers to read reddit-style information for certain query types, and is looking for all reddit topics for that query.
 
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Also, i don't believe that reddit queries are the solely the result of bad SERPS. It could also be that the searcher only prefers to read reddit-style information for certain query types, and is looking for all reddit topics for that query.

Since the default is Reddit/Quora... what if the user does NOT want a reddit result...?

Do they search "How to scale fish non-reddit" ?

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Currently doesn't even exist haha.
 
Since the default is Reddit/Quora... what if the user does NOT want a reddit result...?

Do they search "How to scale fish non-reddit" ?

jlaafFA.png


Currently doesn't even exist haha.
how to scale fish -inurl:[reddit]
 
Go look up that "how to scale fish" query and that will tell you everything how fucked up the serps are now.

Nothing useful on the first page, just very short and very brief guides from various fishmongers and Wikihow/The Spruce Eats.

The only useful result on page 1 are the videos. Is that what Google is doing? Pumping up Youtube?

Then on page 2 you find the first content site and sorry to say, it's also trash, it is typical third world, no structure or reason, seo optimized babble, where "how to scale a fish" is the last in the article after a bunch of nonsense about "why to scale a fish".

I'm sorry once again to be bearer of bad news, but such a site does not deserve a top spot.

If I had that site, I would move that guide to the top, give people what they actually want, then go into my kitchen and scale a salmon or a red snapper or whatever fish is near you. Literally just scrape those scales off, before pic, after pic. It would take you less than 15 minutes if you could order that fish home. Then I'd spend 5 minutes more overlaying some red arrows saying "fish", "hold fish here" and "drag knife this way". I would not put ads on it yet. Then I'd write a humorous reddit friendly intro and put that in a spreadsheet and set up a google mention of site:reddit.com "how to scale a fish", then drop in with my aged domain and post that in a reply.

All together that content would take about 30 minutes of my time, which maybe doesn't scale great, but on the other hand, I'd have an actual argument for that post to be nr. 1.
 
Go look up that "how to scale fish" query and that will tell you everything how fucked up the serps are now.

Nothing useful on the first page, just very short and very brief guides from various fishmongers and Wikihow/The Spruce Eats.

The only useful result on page 1 are the videos. Is that what Google is doing? Pumping up Youtube?

Then on page 2 you find the first content site and sorry to say, it's also trash, it is typical third world, no structure or reason, seo optimized babble, where "how to scale a fish" is the last in the article after a bunch of nonsense about "why to scale a fish".

I'm sorry once again to be bearer of bad news, but such a site does not deserve a top spot.

If I had that site, I would move that guide to the top, give people what they actually want, then go into my kitchen and scale a salmon or a red snapper or whatever fish is near you. Literally just scrape those scales off, before pic, after pic. It would take you less than 15 minutes if you could order that fish home. Then I'd spend 5 minutes more overlaying some red arrows saying "fish", "hold fish here" and "drag knife this way". I would not put ads on it yet. Then I'd write a humorous reddit friendly intro and put that in a spreadsheet and set up a google mention of site:reddit.com "how to scale a fish", then drop in with my aged domain and post that in a reply.

All together that content would take about 30 minutes of my time, which maybe doesn't scale great, but on the other hand, I'd have an actual argument for that post to be nr. 1.
Doesn’t scale great :smile:
 
The only useful result on page 1 are the videos. Is that what Google is doing? Pumping up Youtube?
Serious question, why would anyone want to read how to scale fish? Most likely they are looking for someone to show them hence why Youtube video is #1, and other videos in the SERPs.

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I mean seriously, do you think a 1200-2000 word article on how to scale fish is more effective than a 1-2 minute video? It's a "how to" and video is literally the fastest way to absorb the type of information.

There literally shouldn't be ANY word articles as a result, cause the person Googling probably has a fish in front of them that needs scaling in the next 5-10 minutes.

Literally just scrape those scales off, before pic, after pic.

Photos? You're crazy. That's a video scenario from here to kingdom come.

I'd have an actual argument for that post to be nr. 1.

You guys are avoiding reality. In no reality in the multiverse is an article with photos a better solution than video for this particular query. No.

Now I'm starting to realize that there is a deep dive in the SEOs versus the marketers, cause I have to ask what about a TikTok dance, "how to do the Renegade TikTok Dance?" Should that be an article too?

Because if you believe that - you're a dinosaur, and are too addicted to Google and SEO, because in NO Reality should articles be coming up for these types of how to queries.

Bottomline, the user is not going to read an article on "how to scale fish" - they are going for a video, 1000% of the time. if you think otherwise - you're already dead. You're a dead dinosaur.

That query was perfect, cause it shows how the SEO world thinks versus what consumers expect, and that should show there is a Grand Canyon level divide between the realities.

Now I'm starting to think this was a good update.

And I'm not trying to be insulting cause @bernard you're a wise contributor to this place - but, Uh Oh. SEO is in a lot of trouble if that's the line of thinking.
 
@CCarter Haha, no I get what you're saying. I was going with the example in this thread and the content site example.

IF you were to try to rank for "how to scale a fish" which there are contents sites that are. Btw, theres a featured snippet on that serp which will get decent traffic.

Here's the thing, yes, that's a video query, but there's also "how to scale salmon", "how to scale asian carp", "how to scale a breem" (actual query) and so on.

Video doesn't always explain your exact situation. Each of those are perfect to steal the featured snippet with.

Our guy on page 2 with his content site did none of these things. Just went into a third world babble "why scale fish is good idea".

And no one's saying you can't make a quick video scaling a breem or a scaling a fish with a spoon (without a scaler).

The point is, the correct play would be a page with your own videos, the second best would be vidoes, the third best would be your own page with others videos, the fourth best would be your own pictures etc etc.

The absolutely last and worst case would be to have some 800 word content that doesn't even attempt to provide actual value.

Is it worth doing any of these things for a 600 word query? Probably not how Google is now. Which is what we're discussing, not if SEO is dead and there's only video.
 
I was going with the example in this thread and the content site example.
It was so startling when I read that, it made me realize or at least think that there is a good chunk of people in SEO that think those queries should bring up long or short form word articles instead of video.

These are the same people that might be complaining about what's going on in the SERPs.

How-To instructional stuff - people want quick information, to digest it. And the reality is photos are content, but video is another piece of content that's far superior. So are these people writing articles with no instructional photos? Just photos and no Video? Or No words just videos?

There is an reply above about a guy that's simply doing YouTube, and a comment was made that he might be leaving money on the table with no website:

dude is leaving a fair bit on the table I'd wager

I disagree. I think going the website route with word articles is a worse ROI than video on a platform that's got eyeballs and is favored with the #1 search engine and has Adsense / advertisement / monetization already implemented.

Time is a factor that's being overlooked in that scenario. Editing videos is already time, and now translating it to words for a website - doesn't make sense, doesn't scale. Going back to an ANCIENT format, word articles, in 2023... Might as well type up Morse Code versions while you are at it.

Video is not just here, it has BEEN here for 10+ years. What's after video is some interactive version of video, like video is an upgrade to "photos", moving photos. Next is interactive. You guys have to move with the times.

The recent replies in this thread has made me realize people are looking at the SERPs from the SEO = word article lens, instead of the consumer lens. And that's where the disconnect keeps occurring.
 
Well, call me psychotic but for the how to scale a fish article...

I would've done a video followed by images followed by word descriptions of each step.

Present to the user/searcher with information in all formats. Ya never know in what format the person learns/absorbs information the best...
 
Time is a factor that's being overlooked in that scenario. Editing videos is already time, and now translating it to words for a website - doesn't make sense, doesn't scale. Going back to an ANCIENT format, word articles, in 2023... Might as well type up Morse Code versions while you are at it.
Even the scaling fish example.

Record video of scaling fish; Edit, upload. (OH and add to Tiktok and Youtube shorts for those quick dopaminergic hits).
Write article on scaling fish, add to a website; Images in article.
Link to the website in the video description.
Embed the video in the article.

All that stuff is time consuming - but if it helps you to sell more filet knives, why not be omnipresent?
 
I would've done a video followed by images followed by word descriptions of each step.
Are you doing video for your current niche/industry? Are there competitors doing video?

but if it helps you to sell more filet knives, why not be omnipresent?
There isn't enough time in the day to hit all that yourself, so you need to hire someone or outsource something.

I feel like this method is trying to squeeze a penny instead of going after bigger bucks with another video that has better ROI for your time.

I get the optimal scenario of trying to hit all checkboxes - but it's not realistic in maximizing ROI.

If videos are making XX,XXX amount of money, but your website is making you X,XXX per month, eventually you are going to drop the website since the video's ROI is better and the website is a fraction of the ROI.

If you are making 5 figures on video, and 4 figures on the website - why not just drop the 4 figures and put that time in the videos? It reduces friction, reduces steps, reduces your to-do list, reduces stress, and makes you more money.

Think about it like this, you know the customers that make you the most money versus customers that make you the least. Yes you want to make sure everyone gets great customer service. However the ones spending $20,000 a month with you are going to get more attention and christmas gifts versus the guy spending $300 with you. It's the ROI on time.

Can a $300 turn into a $20K guy? Maybe, but let's concentrate on the today money versus hypothetical money in the future.
 
In the end, these are very different businesses and very different mindsets. Some people will continue to dominate the SEO game, what's left of it, and others will have to find different things to do.

Great discussion though.
 
In the end, these are very different businesses and very different mindsets. Some people will continue to dominate the SEO game, what's left of it, and others will have to find different things to do.

Great discussion though.
Hopefully people look at these things as just that too - discussions. I'm not one to get emotional or wrapped up in this stuff but you can for sure feel the angst in a number of replies.

I've already noted everything @CCarter has said and will find ways to implement stuff he notes; Hopefully others do the same as there's always room to improve.


There isn't enough time in the day to hit all that yourself, so you need to hire someone or outsource something.

Of course, that's all I was getting at.

The person I was citing has two channels with like 6m subs, he could easily do something like say Joshua Weissman and have the recipes transcribed.

https://www.youtube.com/@JoshuaWeissman/
https://www.joshuaweissman.com/
^Funnel for cookbooks, cutlery, recipes, and more.

Even my example above when I mentioned how are people searching brands, I literally looked up "burrito joshua weissman" the other day just to copy his dry rub for his chicken thighs. That's also without knowing he had a recipe for it - I just assumed he did and then found an article.

If you've ever watched some of these folks who do "recipes" - it's extremely annoying to have to cycle back through a video to hear them reiterate ingredients lists or even worse, these folks don't list the ingredients in the video description.

The recipe video has no ingredients in the description but he does link to the recipe.

---

Since we're on the topic of the knife niche too:
https://dalstrong.com/

Their YouTube channel itself doesn't perform super well: https://www.youtube.com/@Dalstrong/videos
https://www.tiktok.com/@dalstrong?lang=en

Neither long form or short form; But what they do is get their knives in the hands of larger Youtubers (like that 6M+ sub guy I mentioned:
) as a form of sponsorship.

Maybe it's because their Youtube team blows? Their goal in the videos I just looked at are to seemingly push shiny object syndrome to get sales.

Their written content: https://dalstrong.com/blogs/news

They've pushed their blog heavily and it was favored during these updates.

So if you were in their shoes, what would you do?

I know we don't have KPIs to look at it - these could be even baseless assumptions; But externally, I see low views and I kind of doubt the videos convert. Where-as blog content is clearly being favored and traffic from organic search is improving.

Are you going to push the written content more OR would you analyze the videos and see if that's a money suck and adjust them accordingly?

The issue is I'd wager to say too is that Blogging (written word) as a whole is a lower barrier of entry in terms of "cost" from both a time and money perspective - for most people. Where-as video (depending on the niche) is what I'd deem far more involved.

---

Even videos too - your channel has the potential to get algo fucked (by the same people that run the same company as your blog) and one moment you're hot shit, the next you're not showing up in the related tab.

I feel like being everywhere, all at once should be the goal.

Probably the best example that People can look at and model is Kevin from Epic Gardening: https://www.epicgardening.com/

He started as a niche-site style blogger, blogging about plants and then invested into all aspects of his business; Written, video, other socials and forms of driving traffic. He also has a related company that sells seeds and garden products.

Time consuming is an understatement. But if you're passionate about something, you'll probably find a way to do it - like Kevin is doing right now.
 
Doesn’t scale great :smile:

drums-ba-dum-tss.gif


No, it doesn't scale in the way you guys do scale.

It could scale if you repurpose it for different kinds of media and products. If instead of ads, you sold your own line of knives. Or if you combined your indepth guides and videos with being an affiliate for high level knives and scalers.

Even an info article will make affiliate sales as long as you set that cookie. Won't work with Amazon though, you need 10% in commission (at least).
 
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