Display URL Strategies

[dchase]

What is the point of the display URL?

If my site is about basketball but the domain name i use is bask-et-ball.com ... what are the consequences of me using basketball.com as the display URL?

Does it matter what I put as the display URL?

If my site is about sporting news ... could i just use ESPN.com as display url to draw attention and drive Click Throughs?

Thanks,

[narsticle]

you cant do that....firstly your ad would get pulled because your destination URL doesnt match your display URL and secondly you would have a trademark issue on your hands.

[LifeinAsia]

Not only that, but there are people that just type the display URL directly instead of clicking on the ad. So you'll be sending people to your competitor.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

... could i just use ESPN.com as display url to draw attention and drive Click Throughs?

It's important to remember the user experience, dchase, the protection of which underlies the formal guidelines alluded to by narsticle.

Ask yourself how you would feel if, as a potential customer, you clicked on an ad thinking that you'd go to ESPN's site - and then found yourself someplace else altogether.

Would you trust the advertiser whose site you actually landed on, and do business with them? I'd guess not.

Would you trust AdWords ads in future? I'd guess probably not.

Let the answers to such questions be your guide when making decisions like this, just as much as the formal guidlines and policies.

AWA

[jtara]

Would you trust AdWords ads in future? I'd guess probably not.

I don't now. Because Google doesn't enforce this rule.

See the seperate discussion on this issue, where the concensus seems to be:

- There's currently no automated check
- It's often not caught upon manual review
- It's often ignored when competitors complain
- Most here seem to think it's "OK", since Google doesn't enforce it

[narsticle]

Above poster:

Its funny that you say that because i have had many ads suspended that had tracking codes and were legitemetly going to the same URL as the display. Some sort of monitoring system IS in place and its very faulty.

[Kobayashi]

As I have mentioned in other threads, even in cases where they do recognize and disapprove the ad for this, the problem is it often runs on google.com for days while it awaits review causing legitimate ads above it to pay a premium and knocking ones below it down a position. All this could easily be solved by simply comparing the display domain with the final destination domain during ad creation but Google refuses to make this simple change. Until a valid reason why they have not implemented this is provided, I can only assume it is because they make more money out of the current process than if they were to fix it.

[roxyyo]

I think the only time you'd want to use the display URL strategically is in the trailing keyword. For example: keyword = widgetizer model RX235

Display URL: www.widgetbox.com/WidgetizerRX235

to reinforce the relevance to the searcher, because you will be displayed next to other ads, so this might give you a perceived higher relevance.

Just make sure your landing page matches that keyword as well.

[jtara]

roxyyo's example is most legitimate. I'd add that it's probably better to drop the "www" (make sure your site is configured as such, of course) as this gives you 4 more letters. If your keyword is in the URL, it will be highlighted, just as it is in the text.

Though this MIGHT get you a better relevance score, make sure it makes sense to PEOPLE. If your site is widget.tld, don't do widget.tld/widgets. It just looks silly and desperate. Go with widget.tld/type_of_widget.