As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.

Amazon is not much communicative about the reason behind this step, and the FAQ on its website only cites that it is based on ‘their review of how they invest their advertising resources’. This may be because it costs Amazon a lot of money, but at the same time it necessarily cannot be a reason to block Associates from using paid search as a way to bring in traffic during normal times. It can also agitate the degrading economic condition. In this case paid search underperforms contextual links when it comes to sales referrals.