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Sphinn Home » PPC
Google Updates AdWords Display URL Policy
Avatar Went Hot: Feb 12, 2008 - 09:26 pm
Posted By: DaveDavis 728 Days ago
Source: http://www.ppchero.com
Category: PPC
As of April 1, Google will be making significant changes to their enforcement of display URL policies. The “Policy Team” has taken a stricter stance on the relationship between display URLs and destination URLs — and they will be allowing few exceptions to their rules. In short, if your destination URL is www.example.com, your display URL must be www.example.com. Just to alleviate any confusion: display URLs are what is displayed in your ad text – destination URLs are where your ad text leads post-click.
 Comments11 Comments  

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Avatar Moderator
from evilgreenmonkey 728 Days ago #
Votes: 2

If this is purely TLD based, it’s unlikely to stop affiliates (who this is most likely targeting). Just one of the ways to bypass this is to buy a branded domain, e.g. amazon-offers.com, then use it for the display URL and cloak/frame the landing page. OK, maybe it will make more savvy internet users think twice, although it’s not going to cause a massive loss. Plus you can of course knock the merchant’s ads off by cloning their ads and using their domain still (as long as the affiliate tracker uses their domain). Quite an obvious ploy in Google’s continued quest to get rid of affiliates and force merchants to go direct to them with a CPA model.

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from planetc1 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Affiliates are most likely targets but I’m seeing this in the small business world. Companies using urls like LAPumber.com or GreatDentist.com in display but destination URL is different.

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from PPCblogger 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

That will just be a redirect or keyword level urls planetc1 and this won’t stop that...I thought those rules were already in place anyway... lol. If you were sending traffic to a .co.uk but had a .com as the display url you will get it pulled anyway? So whats the change...If a site has a .co.uk and a .com and one doesn’t redirect to the other you will still be able to have two ads per business... ie an affiliate aswell.

Avatar Moderator
from evilgreenmonkey 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

@PPCblogger: In my experience you don’t get pulled for going from .com to .co.uk or vis versa. That’s why affiliates use www.amazon.com and www.amazon.com/uk in the UK for display URLs when advertising www.amazon.co.uk. It doesn’t get pulled and it bypasses the duplicate ad filter (as Amazon uses www.amazon.co.uk for it’s display URL).

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from PPCblogger 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Interesting.I can get away with using a .co.uk for a .com from an agency account :)If I try and send traffic from my own accounts, I mean account (purely at ad level here) with a display url as .co.uk and the destination url as .com it will get pulled on manual approval.Are you sure these are not just taking advantage of the gap between auto and manual approval?I guess it kinda depends on who is approving aswell......

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from PPCblogger 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Looking at the Amazon example.You should totally be able to have two ads per serp cos obviously there is a .com and .co.uk without redirection... so long as the display and des urls match.But if I were to have www.amazon.com/uk as the display url and I send traffic via the destination url to www.amazon.co.uk it will generally get pulled on manual approval...

Avatar
from QualityNonsense 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Am I missing something? Google have disallowed phoney domains as display URLs for as long as I’ve been using AdWords:"The display URL doesn’t need to be the exact same as your destination URL, but it should be an actual URL that is part of your site."

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from PPCblogger 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

yep.... nothing has changed as far as I can see.Unless they can follow redirects after manual approval. :)

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from QualityNonsense 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

Jeez... I thought for a moment G were going to challenge Yahoo in the "prepostorous PPC rules" stakes and disallow legit redirects.

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from PPCblogger 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016230.htmlConfirmed by Barry,

Avatar Moderator
from rustybrick 727 Days ago #
Votes: 0

note: not a policy change, it is the same policy.  they are just enforcing it now.

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