Google Being Lazy About Validating AdWords Display URLs?
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.
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rustybrick in Google AdWords at December 7, 2007 8:02 AM
Comments (2)

Comments
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
Posted by Joshua Wexelbaum at December 7, 2007 09:02