Didit Survey: 54 Percent of Mom Bloggers Fail to No-Follow Sponsor Links
March 22, 2016: Google’s recent announcement that it will soon crack down on review bloggers who fail to adequately disclose their sponsored pots and fail to no-follow links to sponsor sites is expected to significantly impact the review blog sector.
While it’s difficult to assess how much money is at stake, just the “Mom Blogger” segment of this industry is huge. The Mom Bloggers Club boasts of having 23,000 members. In 2012, Mashable reported that almost 4 million U.S.-based mothers identify themselves as bloggers. That same article further reported that “the average mommy blog’s household income in $84,000 — $14,000 higher than average income for non-blogging moms.”
This money comes in many forms, including payment in cash, in review products that are not returned, forms of non-cash compensation, and from many different sources, including PR agencies, manufacturers and vendors, and through affiliate relations, typically via Amazon or Commission Junction.
To assess the readiness of the Mom Blogger segment to handle Google’s recent announcement, Didit performed a random survey of 50 Mom Blog sites, using several Mom Blog directories as sources, including:http://www.topmommyblogs.com/category/Shopping-Review-Blogs/, http://www.twirlygirlshop.com/blog/top-10-mom-bloggers-to-review-your-products/, http://www.mommylivingthelifeofriley.com/pr-friendly-blog-directory/pr-friendly-blog-directory-letter-a/, and http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/product-review.
Here’s what we found:
Mom Blogger Compliance
Disclosure Compliance: 82 percent (41) of surveyed Mom Bloggers provided some kind of disclosure policy warning readers that the products they reviewed were supplied to them by agencies, manufacturers, and other vendors. Such disclosure is usually included in a separate “disclosure” page on the site and, in most cases, replicated in the actual post containing the review. While disclosure language is not standardized, in most cases such language clearly warns the viewer that what he or she is about to read has been sponsored by a 3rd party.
No-Follow Link Compliance: 54 percent (27) of Mom Bloggers surveyed failed to no-follow links pointing back to sponsor sites. This finding was surprising – in fact, it was a bit shocking.
Discussion
The overwhelming adoption of disclosure language among Mom Bloggers indicates that many have been mindful of the fact that the FTC has been taking a close look at disclosure requirements in the past several years. This is testament to the effectiveness with which the FTC has transmitted its message, as well as the likely influence of WOMMA (the Word of Mouth Marketing Association), whose Code of Ethics has been in existence for some time.
At the same time, however, the fact that less than half of Mom Bloggers surveyed are implementing no-follow tags is troubling, and suggests that the review blog community will be more vulnerable to any penalties that Google has in mind than many expect.
While Google has not indicated that any penalty is imminent for non-compliant review blogs, there is no question that failing to comply carries with it substantial risks. For this reason it may be necessary to do more to “get the word out” about Google’s requirements to Bloggers most vulnerable to noncompliance-related ranking downgrades.
In the meantime, Mom Bloggers beware: while it’s likely that you have a satisfactory disclosure policy in place, your no-follow links may be held against you — so fix them now!
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