Domain Trouble

Recent changes preventing similar domains showing at the same time?

[Kiter]

I've been advertising a service on adwords for the last year or so, working as an affiliate, alongside the company themselves who also advertise the service, but we've been using different domains - (lets say) widget.co.uk and widget.com - and both domains are active and valid for the service. In the last couple of weeks, something strange has been happening - only one advert has been appearing, either the company's or mine, but never both at the same time.

Did something change at Google? Also, I can't work out how the system is deciding which advert should appear - sometimes my .co.uk advert appears, sometimes the company's .com ad appears. We don't appear to be in a bidding war as such, ad rates remain at about 50% of the price of my maximum bid (where I'm in premium position), but still my ad only appears sometimes.

Anybody experienced something similar?

[AdWordsAdvisor2]

Kiter,

Under our affiliate policy, the .com and the .co.uk will be considered the same domain, so they should not both show ads at the same time. On a search where more than one ad with the same domain is available in the auction, we will show whichever one would have the highest position. There is no bidding competition between the same domain ads, so it should not effect what your actual CPC is on that search.

AWA2

[eWhisper]

Under our affiliate policy, the .com and the .co.uk will be considered the same domain

How is it determined if they are the same domain name? Is it a hand review, or is AdWords using automated software to see if the domains have the same content?

[AdWordsAdvisor2]

eWhisper,

First, we take a little pinch of pixie dust ...

Both manual and automatic reviews are used when we are linking domains for the affiliate policy. That is what I am sure will be described as a typically vague Google answer, but in this case I think it's easy to understand why.

AWA2

[eWhisper]

AWA2 -

Makes sense. Still have to ask ;)