Google Checkout UK hit the streets last Friday with many early adopter Merchants jumping on the bandwagon. Some of them even wrote to Affiliates to let them know that because they where first, Google was offering all customers who bought goods via the Google checkout system £10 off any order over £30. What a cracking deal for the customer and something Affiliates could easily push except there is one tiny little problem – none of the sales track!!!

Yes that’s right any Merchant you are currently pushing that has Google Checkout enabled and is via a Network not approved by Google, means that the Merchant can not show the tracking code for that Network and in turn means no sales are tracked. So Affiliates lose out on any potential commission they could have made.

Now the Networks are not to blame here, most of them didn’t know Google Checkout UK was going live in the UK last Friday, indeed the only Network Approved already had to battle to get it sorted 6 months ago for the US side of the Networks Operation.

The shocking part is that the Merchant currently making money from Affiliate traffic that can not be tracked via Google Checkout actually think they are doing nothing wrong. One of them is quoted as saying “our agreement with Google does not permit us to restrict offering Google Checkout for a proportion of our customers”. All I can make from this is that they don’t much care about the Affiliate Network Terms that say they have to track all sales done online and worse still they are showing no matter what way they try to spin it, that they value Google Checkout above their current Affiliates supplying them sales. The theory must be “lets cash in now and hope the Affiliates will forget what we have done once it’s all sorted”, but who knows the true motives, we can only go on what we see as fact.

Affiliate sales are not tracking, Affiliates are losing money, the Merchant is not! If the Merchant was losing money do you think they stick to the Google Checkout Terms if that is in fact part of the terms.

Other people reporting about Google Checkout UK are Fraser Edwards and Jess Luthi, to keep up with the current state of play for UK Networks you will find a thread I have made over at A4U plus other threads highlighting the current issues.

A4U – Networks Status with Google Checkout
A4U – Google Checkout – Sales not being tracked
A4U – Merchants Seen Using Google Checkout