Baffled as to how my landing page is "low quality"

[profitpuppy]

To me it seems like a perfect quality landing page, exactly on target. There is no advertising. Asked Google and received a form letter with a link to websites to avoid, listed below. But none of these apply. It is a free site, and does have a mailing list so that's the only thing that I can think of. But it's not offering a "free item" like a free washing machine. It's just offering free information.

In fact the entire website is completely free and has no advertising. It's the cleanest most white hat site I can imagine. Totally baffled as to why they don't want me to advertise?

Website Types to Avoid

* Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information
* Arbitrage sites that are designed for the purpose of showing ads
* Affiliate sites that the primary purpose of which is to drive traffic to another site with a different domain
* "Get-rich quick" sites
* Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor's computer
* Poor comparison shopping or travel sites whose primary purpose is to send users to other shopping/travel comparison sites, rather than to provide useful content or additional search functionality

[Elric99]

Sounds like it needs more content. Also, are you an affiliate?

[mustan9]

I only know of keywords having a quality score. I've looked in the adwords interface for a landing page score, and can't find anything.

So how are you defining that your site has a low score?

[profitpuppy]

There are no affiliate programs. There is a lot of content totally on topic.

When you see the reason why ads are not showing it says that my landing page has a low quality score in the adwords interface.

[mustan9]

Ah, thanks I didn't know it would do that.

Did you read my comments here.

[webmasterworld.com...]

I read somewhere on Google's website that lacking a sitemap, privacy policy and contact page is a problem for Google. You also need to make the URLs for those pages human readable. http://www.example.com/privacy-policy.html for example.

Do you have those pages?

[James_WV]

profitpuppy - if you have a form on your landing page offering anything for free then that's more than likely the reason you've been hit with the penalty.

Try asking G for a manual review - a lot of sites got caught accidentally lately.

Otherwise they've decided that your form doesn't meet their quality guidelines - you don't necessarily have to be offering a free product (free info can do it depending on the topic). If this is the case you'll need to remove the form, or have a big button saying enquire here that then goes to another page on your site with the enquiry form

[smallcompany]

It's just offering free information

What do you do with those emails? Isn't that data collection?
Why do you pay for advertising to give something that is free?

Those questions should trigger some help.

[profitpuppy]

Thanks for the replies guys, Yes have a readable privacy policy and contact us page. Don't have phone and address on the contact us page which is a potential problem but putting it on there. Don't have a sitemap, maybe that would help.

The reason for advertising a free site is to get some initial split test data and see what pages/ configurations convert the best before doing a PR campaign.

I've asked for a manual review, will see if it works.

[jquail]

Would anyone be able to share the url to submit a manual review of your landing page/s to google?

Would be very grateful!

[profitpuppy]

I don't think there is such a url. They don't officially do manual reviews. Just if you ask they might do it. That's my understanding.

[jquail]

Thanks for the info profitpuppy!

[James_WV]

yeah, no official email address - just use the adwords contact email address from your account.

@profitpuppy - I don't think your manual review will go through unless you remove the form - but good luck!

[profitpuppy]

I have very good information guys! I just discovered why it has low landing page quality. It's because I am using a 3rd party email provider (a 3rd party autoresponder). They don't like that I am signing up people to the email list ... BUT it's not the email list that's the problem, but the fact that the email list is hosted by a 3rd party. Now however I've got to figure out if I want to make the necessary changes to the site in order to have my own autoresponder/ email list or some other solution. This is dangerous as it can be hard to successfully manage an autoresponder and ensure being properly whitelisted when sending the emails.

I'm tempted to just not bother advertising on google at all.

[mustan9]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Is the problem that the e-mail subscribe form on your landing page sends the posted data to another domain?

[profitpuppy]

Put it this way: Most 3rd party email providers are a problem, unless everything is on your domain.

So yes when they subscribe it posts the data to the provider via their domain (not my domain)

[mustan9]

See if your e-mail provider supports subscribing using a GET request.

If they do you can do a POST redirect.

That's where the form submits to your domain, and your server converts the request into a redirect to the third party domain as a GET request.

[RhinoFish]

Does your privacy policy address sending this customer data to third parties?

Is that third party possibly in bad graces for treatment of consumer data?

I can see how this might be causing you reputation / quality problems with G.

[profitpuppy]

They are a major autoresponder company and I don't think they have any problems with their treatment of consumer data. They have best practices as far as unsubsribing and they get delivery to gmail.

As to the privacy policy, I don't think Google has a bunch of people reading the exact details of the privacy policy.