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A WebmasterWorld thread reports Google is being more lax about validating AdWords advertiser's display URLs.
Google AdWords affiliate policy says:
We will only display one ad per search query for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the display URL. This means that if you're an affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads using the same (or a similar) domain in the display URL.
This member said, "lately I've noticed as many as 5 invalid Display URLs for one search term - all of which lead to the same page on the merchant's site."
Google has taken notice, where AdWordsAdvisor said "what I have been doing, though, is passing these threads along to the right teams - and I see quite a lot of attention being paid to them."
Do you think Google has been getting lazy validating their advertisers and their policies?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Joshua Wexelbaum
12/07/2007 02:02 pm
Definitely! I recently created a video on my blog showing exactly how lazy they have become. Specifically, not doing any type of automatic check to see if the display URL matches the domain. In the case I found, the guy was bidding on "firefox", showing a display URL of Firefox.org, and taking the person to his own site selling tech support. http://www.scrappybusiness.com/hacking-the-adwords-display-url.htm
Paul S
12/09/2007 05:37 am
The post mentions that "Google has taken notice" but that has NOT been the case for me at all. I got pushed to very high bids on Quality Score (another story entirely) but I still see people showing up on these terms going direct to affiliate with made-up URLs, not even close to the landing page URL. I've gotten on the phone with google and the adwords rep says "you're right, that should not be there, I will refer it to the appropriate team and the ad will be dis-approved." Literally months will elapse, and the ad never goes anywhere. I'll bring it up on subsequent calls, the rep will say they see that note in the call history, and they will refer it again, and still nothing. Go figure.