Multiple sources outside of Google have confirmed that the company plans to announce a new policy today that will limit the number of sponsored listings that resolve to the same site per page of search engine results. Google plans to announce their new policy today and it will take effect on January 12th, 2005.

This new policy is an effort by Google to improve the customer experience by displaying more choices to the customer when they conduct any given search.

This new policy should have a large impact on merchant companies who have been relying on a large base of paid search engine marketers to drive traffic to their sites, including sites like eBay, Amazon, Overstock, and BizRate. Also affected are merchant companies that have relied on affiliates to help protect their brand names by having affiliates bid on these terms so that competitors won't be displayed when their brand is searched for on Google.

Of course the paid search affiliate marketer who relies solely on directing traffic directly through affiliate links to their merchant partners will also be greatly affected by this change. All indications are that Google will look at the final destination domain and or IP address to determine duplication of ads, so simple redirects will no longer work. These affiliate marketers will need to build out more individual content sites to survive.

Ironically, this move by Google will force these affiliates, myself included, to take steps that have prevented them from marketing on Overture's service, Google's main competitor.

Google's new policy could deal a major blow to the affiliate marketing community.

Has Google gone back on their policy to do no Evil?