Expired Domain -Kills Quality Score on Adwords- How Do We Rescue site?

[saerchengineman]

We are dealing with an issue of a client who let their domain expire.
for about a day. It has been renewed.
The effect on Adwords was immediate with quality score shot down to 1
for all terms, it has been over a week now with no changes. The campaign is effectively not showing.

The customer has renewed his domain, but the damage has been done

we've notified Google Adwords Support, but aside from canned answers
the customers account has flatlined -- We don't have weeks as this is the customers peak season.

I have also learned that the clients SEO may also be in danger
but I am not sure if this 100% true (See below sources), as SERPS are still showing,

My immediate concern is getting the ADWORDS account up and running.


I am looking for actionable responses, to rescue this clients website.
unfortunately I'm hoping someone out there has experienced this before first hand and may have suggestions.


This is what I've learned with initial research:

--------------------------------------------------------------
[seroundtable.com ]

WebmasterWorld administrator, Tedster, told the webmaster that in many
cases your domain will be lost in Google until you renew it.
It might take a few days for the domain to reappear in Google.
Tedster was right, a few days later,
the webmaster came back in to let us know his site was indexed and ranking again.

--------------------------------------------------------------
[forums.searchenginewatch.com ]

Submit a new sitemap and do a WMT reconsideration request.
Explain exactly what happened.
As long as your registrar info is the same it should clear up within a few weeks.

--------------------------------------------------------------
[webmasterworld.com ]

Google has included in its algorithm an expired site check
dead sites are certainly bad for Googles business

<snip>

--------------------------------------------------------------
[seroundtable.com ]
[seroundtable.com ]

former PR Value is not passed from previously expired domains (Debate)

Searchengineman

[edited by: buckworks at 3:29 pm (utc) on Mar 9, 2010]
[edit reason] Removed a broken link [/edit]

[netmeg]

None of those things you mentioned have to do with AdWords, they only affect organics.

If it were me, I'd duplicate the campaigns, pause the old ones, and hope that would jump start it. Yea, you would lose the history, but the main concern is to get up and running again. I usually find submitting new ads helps too.

And even then, you'll probably still have to wait a few days to a week more.

AdWords just doesn't work that quickly anymore.

[saerchengineman]

Did that, tried that immediately...didn't work

The campaign has already been reposted, in the hopes of jump starting the ADWORDS campaign. Within 10 minutes the terms reverted back to quality score 1. Re-posting a new campaign does squat.

2nd tactic was to bite the bullet and meet the minimum bid $12.00 a click.. no dice.

So again, if anyone has any insight..beyond call Google. Which I have.

I am all ears.

Searchengineman

[netmeg]

You have to wait more than 10 minutes. As I said, once you resubmit, you're probably in for several days waiting, maybe a week.

[crispybcn]

searchengineman,
I have a similar problem with a client which we are still trying to solve. Interestingly, the client set up a totally new adwords account and the same thing happened. we have removed our Robots.txt file and are trying a few other steps: plain html landing page, host landing page on a different server..I'll update here on what works. If, in the meantime, you solve the issue, please TELL!
ps: Google say that the Adwords bot does not crawl regularly..so might have to wait a bit. there is also some suggestion that Google blacklists accounts (urls?)

[outland88]

I'd keep the advertising on separate domains. Then you can just go back in the original account and just change url’s.

[crispybcn]

Search Engine Man,
Just received a message from Google rep saying that any review of Landing Page quality may take weeks or months! So even if we solve the issue now we still have to wait. This is a SITE problem not an account issue, as we ran ads from a different account and met the same problem. Think we are going to set up a micro site on a different domain..not great, but don't see a short-term alternative. Hope you had better luck!

[saerchengineman]

Issue Solved:

On Behalf of of our company.

I would like to thank the Google Staff for getting our issue looked at with speed, and professionalism. I understand it would have been easier to not escalate this, and leave us out to dry. It's nice to know that the stories about Googles slow customer service are not true. Thank you for correcting the error, and giving me faith that Google is striving to become the better company

Searchengineman


<email snipped - A Google rep confirmed that the site's low quality score happened because it was down when they reviewed it.>

[edited by: buckworks at 3:25 pm (utc) on Mar 9, 2010]
[edit reason] No emails, no exceptions; paraphrases only [/edit]