Google AdWords Forum

What I have been doing, though, is passing these threads along to the right teams - and I see quite a lot of attention being paid to them.

No word can describe how we feel about wrong display URLs.

Let me repeat myself (from some of my earlier posts):

This idea has just been implemented for reporting malware sites:
[googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com...]

It surely wouldn't be difficult to compare reported ads with those that have been through the review process - I'm guessing all the "9X2AdTC6haQ7UkIABABaoBHUdHR0xiK0dHvJHIZKPGUS" in an ad link is a unique identifier of sorts.

That way Google could use people power to clean up ads in the same way they are using people power to clean up SERPs.

In the meantime, the fraudulent ads can completely kill the impression count and/or CPC and/or CTR and most definitely the ROI of legitimate advertisers. Some businesses that rely on AdWords are severely crippled one-third of the time.

One would think that a company that makes billions of dollars could afford to have a handful of customer support staff available 24x7. Or better yet, they should get just fix the programming in the AdWords engine so it catches these problems when ads are created.

That is what I have a cannot understand. Even today, after so many years, it seems you can put whatever you want in url destination on a keyword level.

Few days ago, I was testing some tracking tool through ad with keyword that would never be typed by a real user. At some point I changed destination URL, but not the display URL (in ad text). A day or so later, I got disapproval.

So, Viva Google! it worked, and I was happy for it.

Still, I see that folks that do it intentionally, almost always do it on keyword level which seems to be working for them, very well.

If google can't catch invalid display urls, how dare they to say that they can determine the quality of an ad/landing page?

Incidentally, the advertiser who runs these ads posted in another forum that he used to play by the rules until he got fed up. In his own words:
"To start, I once was a compliant advertiser, however, after seeing my competitors violating the rules constantly, I had a choice to make, either find a way to compete and dominate them, or quit."

Anyhow, as I could remember, he decided to test how many times he would be able to submit an ad with invalid display URL before he would get contacted “personally” or get account terminated.

It took around 20 times before he got nailed.

So in short:
Ad1 leads to [company.com...]
Ad2 leads to [company.com...]

I reported this search to Adwords support. They said they would look into it. So I asked a week later, and guess what. It's ok , it's allowed!
I've reported ads like these, dozens of times over the last couple of years. Each time Google responded and removed the faulty ads within a day. But for the last few months this has not worked, as many of you have seen. Display-url can be www.what-ever-i-come-up-with.com.

This last time when I called I interrupted the young lady on the other side of the phone and told her I could “sing” all those sentences they tell me every time.
She stopped and stayed silent.

I think those front row folks are under great pressure between clients and those that are responsible for invalidities appearing in the system.
In addition, those at the back row seem to be ignoring our submissions like they are expecting the system to take care of it.

Ad with invalid display URL should not be approved if it goes through manual process, period. I simply cannot believe that live human being can do that, except for the small percentage where we can count on “human error”.

It is just that I cannot figure how reported ad can survive two or more weeks. They say “it was maybe submitted again and coming from different advertiser”. No way - I copy destination URL and see it is the same all the time.

It is so hard to understand why all that is as it is.