New Policy for Adwords URLS

[Portland Real Estate]

If you are using adwords, you have probably seen the notice that there is a new policy that your display URLs must match your destination URL.

Although this will mean changing lots of ads for some people, I think that in the long run this is probably good for building trust by improving the user experience.

[RonnieG]

It is really a more rigid enforcement of their existing policy, which some advertisers have been able to partially circumvent in the past with "vanity" domains. Those can make the display domain name and the ad's landing page url have the same domain name, but then they are subsequently 301 redirected to a different domain and landing page entirely, in my case, and especially when I was sending my PPC clicks to my old P2A site, to a community specific home search landing page. In many cases, especially on a P2A site or other site where the webmaster has little or no control over the page's url, this makes the ad's quality score significantly better, thereby reducing PPC costs. Google's written policy was never clear on this before, specifying only that the display domain and url of the landing page in the ad match up, but not requiring that final landing page domain also match up with the first two. The new policy simply closes that loophole.

However, they have also added the ability to add text to the display url, after the top level domain name, that partially negates the negative effects on QS, for some advertisers, by allowing us to add our community names, or other descriptive text. That way, the consumer, and the AdWords QS algo, will have a better idea of what the ad is all about. They have also "grandfathered" existing "borderline" ads. But as soon as you edit or change an existing ad, or create any new ads, the new policy would then take effect.

For REW webmasters, this is a good thing, since many P2A and other template website users who still have to live with nonsensical CMS generated page urls, and who were relying on vanity domain names and redirects to improve their QS, will suffer, while we who have total url naming control, and also take advantage of the additional descriptive text after the display domain name in the ad, will benefit. I have reconfigured all of my AdWords ads to meet the newer rules, and have actually seen lower PPC costs over the last couple of weeks as a result. I will also be able to allow many of the redirected community specific domain names that I was previously using to expire, saving $hundreds$ in domain registration costs per year. That was always my plan, since I replaced my P2A site with REW last year, and this AdWords change simply accelerates it.

[RyanRE]

Thanks for bringing this up. I hadn't noticed. Does it have to be exactly the same?

[RonnieG]

Just the domain names.

[RonnieG]

3rd level domains are OK. Read the rules as posted by Google. If you are advertising with AdWords, the new policy should pop up when you log in to your AdWords account.