This question is regarding the new Adwords URL Policy Enforcement – the URL must match the Landing page URL.
Since only 35 characters are allowed to be written in Adwords, what will happen to those advertisers who promote domains with longer than 35 characters?
Will they have to buy a new shorter domain or their ads won’t stop because its not their fault and there’s nothing they can do.
You're probably not a 'sneak' so this policy doesn't apply to you at all.
Back when this policy was initiated a couple of years ago, most offenders "repented". In what will always be a mystery, many didn't and Google didn't seem to have a way to check to enforce it.
There are several scenarios where this rule comes into play. Here are a couple:
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There is a big company, www.widgets.com -- Adwords will only allow one ad for www.widgets.com to appear per showing.
However, www.widgets.com has many affiliates. In order to get a showing (or multiple showings) in addition to the www.widgets.com, they will show www.MyWidgetShop.com as their display URL, but their destination URL is www.widgets.com -- That is cheating!
-- or --
In order to get 5 showings on the same page in Adwords, an advertiser will set up 5 accounts.
They all have different display URLS, but the destination URL always ends up on www.widgets.com -- That's very wrong too. They want to dominate the Adwords listings!
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I'm sure there are several other exploits similar to the above going on, but it is fine for you to advertise as you have been no doubt. Presumably the portion of the Display URL you show has always fit into the 35 character limit, even if you have to leave off the www.
Your destination URL can remain as it is has been as long as the domain name in the Display URL matches the domain name in the Destination URL. That's regardless of what else you may have to include in your Destination URL to get searchers to the appropriate page.
Otherwise we'd all be up a creek!
Two acceptable examples:
Display URL: www.widgets.com
Destination URL: www.widgets.com/register/index.php?affid=2750&product_id=251&defaultsearchvalue=gtld
is still fine
Display URL: mywidgetplace.com/weeklysale
Destination URL: mywidgetplace.com/weeklysale/widgets/index.php?affid=2350&product_id=251&defaultsearchvalue=gtld
is still fine
So it's also acceptable for you to have your own site with a Display URL such as www.mywidgetshop.com/widgetsale as long as you are heading to a folder with the actual name of widgetsale plus whatever other paramaters you need to include in your destination URL.
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Sounds to me like you're one of the good guys or gals and don't need to change a thing.
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In fact, they're even more liberal than my elementary examples, allowing, for instance:
Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
Landing page URL: www.google.com
The above example is from the "Learn More" on the pink warning box, but that goes way beyond your question.
Get it? You can relax now ;)
Israel
[edited by: Israel at 2:32 pm (utc) on April 11, 2008]
I imagine they use the first 35 characters to figure out the meaning based on whatever word parsing can be done within the limit.
BTW, the term widgets is so commonly used along with widgets.com examples it makes the domain likely worth a million dollars or more.
widgets.com: 3,950 backlinks - not nearly as many as you'd think...
Ok let me tell it more clearly:
The maximum character limit to book a domain is 67 characters.
Remember the days when keyword insertion in the Domain was a major SEO thing?
Let’s get back to the past.
From SEO point of view whatever is my business I will book a domain like this:
www.Keyword1-Keyword2-Keyword3-Keyword4-Keyword5-Keyword6.com
This is 61 characters long.
In course of time I find that I am not getting enough visitors through SEO, so I turn to AdWords for help.
Now this character limit comes into place, so I write my Ad with Display URL as:
www.Keyword1-Keyword2-Keyword3.com (To make sure it fits within the 35 char limit).
The visitor sees this URL, and he/she clicks only to see that the landing page has a different URL:
www.Keyword1-Keyword2-Keyword3-Keyword4-Keyword5-Keyword6.com
I hope my question is clear now.
For no fault of mine, but still, my Display URL and Landing page URL are DIFFERENT.
What happens to my Ads? Will Google stop my Ads because of this policy?
Israel please do reply.
