Peter Chun

Over the last couple of years, Google has been making a variety of changes to the quality score impacting paid search.  First it was more then CTR*Max CPC’s, then the “more” became a dynamic ad ranking model which included landing pages, then that was stretched further into min/max CPC’s as well as “content” on landing pages being valuable.

Effective April 1st, Google will be strictly enforcing a “new” policy that display URL’s must match Destination URL’s.  This will likely have a large impact on free-loading search publishers that aren’t adding much value through the “real-estate” model.  Here’s a list of changes that we should expect with some examples to help explain things better:

• If your destination URL is www.Google.com, the following display URL’s would not be acceptable for any ads for www.Google.com

1. 1. www.Google.co.uk
   2. www.gogle.com
   3. www.gooogle.com

• Google will not allow the use of multiple domains or branding and vanity URL’s

In the affiliate marketing world, this is going to create a little mayhem for search affiliates, as many rely heavily on re-directs (appear to be a direct link) or simply, they use a different display URL and link directly to advertiser.com.

I’m waiting to hear back to what extent vanity URL’s will be restricted.  I’ll update as I learn anything meaningful.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Google, affiliate marketing, internet, online advertising, search marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.