Displayed URL

Experimenting with "relevant" URLs

[chumpulump]

Have any of you experimented with picking a more descriptive, or relevant-sounding URL, to go along with certain campaigns or ad groups?

I noticed that the URL is a really prominently displayed part of the Adword, and my competitors have URLs that sound closely related to the advertisement, whereas my URL is very generic (my company name).

So...I tried checking Godaddy for an unregistered domain name, and just for the sake of experimentation, I put a "nice-sounding" domain name for the Displayed URL, and my real URL for the actual link.

Obviously, if the URL works really well, I will purchase it and make it my own. But all I've noticed is a .2% increase in CTR.

Just wondering if anyone out there has experimented with this and seen solid results...

[Shak]

So...I tried checking Godaddy for an unregistered domain name, and just for the sake of experimentation, I put a "nice-sounding" domain name for the Displayed URL, and my real URL for the actual link.

so you didnt ACTUALLY register the domain name, just decided to show an unregistered domain in the creative?

hmmm :)

There is 1 very big shopping destination in the UK, which uses different urls for each industry, although driving traffic for their ONE site.

eg:

cars > cheap-cars.com
insurance > great-insurance-online.com

there must be some relevance in terms of CTR, but the same time the experienced surfer might think he has been duped?

Shak

[carfac]

chumpulump:

Be VERY chareful my friend!

I just discovered- to my dismay- the "Display URL" is the ACTUAL url that some partner sites use!

Here is my site: www.mysite.com

I have my store here: store.mysite.com

My landing pages are IN the store, sometimes a bit deep. For instance:

store.mysite.com/cgi-bin/directory1/directory2/a-g/

which is a bit long. So, I dropped "store" from that URL.

I go and test at Jeeves or somewhere, and what do you know. the URL to my site from the ad is:

mysite.com/cgi-bin/directory1/directory2/a-g/

which takes them to the main site, not the store.... AND they get a 404! NOT what I like paying for.

Must write gg about getting a credit for this!

dave

[chumpulump]

Wow, that is very interesting--and very valuable--information.

Thanks for sharing that...

The idea was, if the URL improves clickthrough rate, purchase it and make it valid. However, it is interesting that hypothetically it could actually lower your CTR...

[carfac]

>>> it could actually lower your CTR

If the display URL will not actually WORK, you still get the click, but they will NOT get to your site.

Sticky me if you want to see a real example!

dave

[1Lit]

Doesn't "brand recognition" come into this. We have short and catchy domain names. Even if people don't click on our link, we are glad to have our URL exposed to millions of searchers.

Or do you think it's highly unlike that somebody is going to recall a URL they've seen in the Google Adword listings and return to it a few days/weeks later? After all, I've read somewhere that people are exposed to thousands of adverts a week in Western countries. Even the pavement blocks have advertising on them in my part of London...

[vibgyor79]

>>> I put a "nice-sounding" domain name for the Displayed URL, and my real URL for the actual link.

According to Google AdWords editorial guidelines, it is not allowed. I'm surprised your ad has not been taken down yet by the editorial team!

From AdWords guidelines -

Display URL Must be Accurate. Your Display URL must accurately reflect the URL of your website

[hannamyluv]

I wouldn't do it for the simple fact that there has to be a small portion of surfers out there who will type in the URL as opposed to clicking on the ad. I am not sure that the keyword related URL will attract enough business that it outweighs this group.

[MarkWolk]

Still, I think chumpulump raised a very interesting question. Many webmasters have several domain names pointing to the same site. There might be a variety of legitimate reasons (other than spam) for that: catch potential misspellings, protect a brand name, etc.

I.e. I own a site which I started 5 years ago and it has always been promoted with an url of the type (example only) mcbn.com - short for My Company Business Name. Handy but not much helpful for keyword relevancy.

A few years ago, I also purchased the url My-Company-Business-Name.com - good for keywords (as my company's name has keywords in it), but not as practical.

I know I have to avoid spam and duplicate sites and I never promoted the second domain. It is redirected to the main site mcbn.com. It is not listed in any search engine. However I could legitimately use that url for Adwords, if it was proven that the presence of relevant keywords in My-Company-Business-Name.com helps in any way.

How long was your experiment, chumpulump? .2% is indeed not worth the effort of doing it. I would have thought that you would benefit from a higher placement among competing Adwords, at least, because you have more relevant keywords.

[chumpulump]

I tried it only a couple of times, and those were for a keyword that was only getting around 0.5%... The keyword-containing URL seemed to boost it to around 0.7%.

In that case, 0.2% seems pretty significant to me, but before further experimentation, I was hoping to hear someone who had used it successfully.

One thing I know for sure is, when you do a search on Google, and take a look at the Adwords on the side, the URL is a really prominent part of that--it takes up a third of the ad space, and I think most surfers are going to be taking the URL into account, even if it is only subconsciously...

For instance--if you're doing a search for a job, and one Adwords has the URL jobsearch.com, and the other has jonesandfarley.com, jobsearch.com might look more appealing.

[MarkWolk]

From 0.5% to 0.7% is not 0.2% more - it is 40% more! It could make a significant difference indeed if it was confirmed on a larger scale.

I have changed my Adwords url to the longer one, containing keywords, and I will keep you informed.

[MarkWolk]

48 hours after, there is no change. The long, keyword rich url does not attract more clickthroughs than the short one.

[chumpulump]

Bummer... I've given up on that gimmick as well. On one of our highest CTR ads (around 2.5%), I tried changing the URL to a common misspelling of our company name, and it actually seemed to hurt performance (1 days worth of CT's got a CTR of 1.9%).

By the way--the misspelled version of our URL is one we actually own, and does redirect to our website.

Then, I changed the URL back to our normal URL, modified the headline and ended up boosting CTR to 5+%.

With future ads, the URL will still be an area I play around with to try to milk some more performance out of the ad, but as of now, I see no concrete evidence of improved CTR's...

[killroy]

I have a problem that my domain is very long, and my add target is a subpage, now the target URL is 1024 characters, but the display url is short, so how can they be the same? I don't understand how much they can differ and in what ways to not violate TOS.

my true url is
www.MyDomainName.com/red-widgets
and currently my disply URL is
MyDomainName.com/red-widgets
because the urly didn't match.

SN