I have been using them since Google allowed that feature, and I have 170K ads. I just added few thousand more ads this weekend, and they started sending me mails for disapproval since yesterday. When my colleague called this morning, the rep said, she thinks this is invalid structure and will contact technical team.
After she talked to the technical team, she responded with complete nusense saying this is not supported and we suggest that you use "www.yoursite.com?referrer=google" for tracking. Which shows she does not even understand that why am I using keywords there. Not for tracking but for unique targeting.
Anyway, I thought I can clarify, and I called. The new rep who picked said, I have never seen anyone using keywords in URL.. so that might be the reason.
I don't know what to do at this point. They really need to train new support reps on Adwords features.
I am on hold to talk to someone else, and I hope this might get resolved soon.
sdani
I've been doing that for some time (for tracking purposes) and it hasn't been a problem.
I have a theory: When Google tests your URLs with a {keyword} parameter, they will often pass a keyword that you don't expect. In my case they passed one of my negative keywords.
What does your page do when it gets a keyword it doesn't expect? If it doesn't behave correctly in this case, then the reviewers at Google will probably reject it. Your page needs to handle an unexpected keyword gracefully, by showing a page that is still pertinent.
This is my Ad title
something something {keyword:default word} something
and this is my URL
[..........]
Now I was handling this URL and showing a graceful page. I uploaded these ads after a long time, and something changed, and they started testing for "default word" in the URL. So this is what they were testing:
[..........]
which obviously did not work. I have started to show a decent page for this URL too and am resbubmitting ALL my keywords, but I just hope that these customer service reps know what they are talking about. They have started behaving like my telephone company's service reps.
sdani
I just can't believe this. I have talked to three people in past 30 minutes and they all DON'T KNOW ABOUT Keywords in Destination URLs.
Sdani, I've just talked to the training folks about this, to make sure that in the future the support teams are more aware.
I do want to comment a little further, though, and say that in my experience only a tiny percentage of advertisers use the function discussed here - with most practitioners probably being WebmasterWorld members. ;)
As a point of reference, I've spent more than 3000 hours communicating directly with advertisers over the past three years, and I have never been asked a question about it. Not even once. And I have no reason to believe that my experience is atypical. (Except maybe for the three that had calls about it today! Heheh.)
Anyway, as I mentioned, I've talked with the training team - and it'll be on the agenda moving forward.
And sorry that you had to chase down an answer.
AWA
I am glad that finally it was resolved. It took 30 minutes, on phone, but they DID call me back with an answer and I am glad they were patient and calm with me.
sdani
