A lot of people have been asking me how Google’s new URL policy will affect them. Seeing as how Google’s URL rules seem a bit jumbled and confusing, I’ll explain it here.
First off, Google has had this rule in place for a while (at least a couple of years), but they haven’t been enforcing it. Basically, Google just wants the display URL to be the same domain as the landing page (for those of you who don’t already know, the landing page is the address of the page your Destination URL takes you to). The best way to explain this is through the following examples:
Accepted Examples:
Display URL: GoogleMoneyPro.com
Destination URL: http://stevenhold.googlemp.hop.clickbank.net
Landing Page: http://www.googlemoneypro.com/cb/index.htm?hop=stevenhold
Display URL: MyWebsite.com
Destination URL: http://www.mywebsite.com
Landing Page: http://www.mywebsite.com
*This examples from Google
Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
Landing Page: www.google.com
You should notice that in the three examples above, all of the landing page addresses are the same domain as the Display URL.
Unacceptable Examples:
Display URL: GMoneyPro.com
Destination URL: http://stevenhold.googlemp.hop.clickbank.net
Landing Page: http://www.googlemoneypro.com/cb/index.htm?hop=stevenhold
To get the above ad to work you would need to change the display URL to googlemoneypro.com so it will match the Landing Page.
Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
Landing Page: www.trackingurl.com
To get the above ad to work, you would need to change the display URL to trackingurl.com so it will be the same domain as the landing page.
Display URL: hop.clickbank.net/
Destination URL: http://stevenhold.googlemp.hop.clickbank.net
Landing Page: http://www.googlemoneypro.com/cb/index.htm?hop=stevenhold
To get the above ad to work you would need to change the display URL to googlemoneypro.com.
Keep in mind that this policy only affects new advertisements. It won’t affect any of your old advertisements, unless you make changes to them. Also, Google considers a different sub domain (ex. http://my.reviewsolution.com) to be acceptable as long as the domain name is consistent.
Also remember that the same website address with a different extensions (.com, .org, .net, etc.) will not be acceptable.
Steven Holdaway is Google AdWords Qualified Advertising Professional, Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador, ClickBank Premier Elite 100
Email this author | All posts by Steven Holdaway | Subscribe to Entries (RSS)
