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Google makes changes to Adwords display URL policy

By Andrew Redfern @ 20th February 2008 4:43 pm

Google will no doubt annoy many of its users of their Adwords system with its decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to its display URL policy.

Blake, from the Inside AdWords crew commented “In response to advertiser and user feedback, and in an effort to provide more relevant advertising results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow certain exceptions with regards to our display URL policy. This includes, but is not limited to redirects and vanity URLs.

This policy will be strictly enforced regardless of past approvals and will apply to all advertisers, beginning on April 1st.

In line with our existing policy, we will continue to require that your ad’s display URL match its destination URL (the URL of your landing page).

For example, if your destination URL is www.google.com, your display URL must also be www.google.com. The following would not be acceptable display URLs for an ad for www.google.com:

www.google.co.uk – because this URL leads to a different site
www.gogle.com – even though this URL simply redirects to www.google.com it is still not acceptable

www.gooogle.com – because this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.google.com
What about tracking URLs?
We do understand that many advertisers utilize tracking URLs within the destination field of their ads. Therefore, if the URL of your landing page matches that of your display URL, your ads will be approved.

For example:

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
–> Landing page URL: www.google.com would be acceptable
Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
–> Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com would not be acceptable

In light of this update to display URL policy, we’d encourage you to make any necessary changes to your ads in advance of the April 1st date to ensure that they’ll run without disruption by future disapprovals related to this policy.”

So in short April 1st is the date when you or your advertiser need to revise you Adwords URL’s to fit the new criteria. No, small task if you are in the retail or travel industry were on average a keyword list would be in the millions rather than thousands.

Want to harness the power of your brand and gain more exposure on the Internet? Want to get more bang for your buck from your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) budget? then contact Hit Search. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

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