I've posted before about problems I've had with adwords that relate to landing page issues. My company collects data via several sites. Some are quiz sites while others are prize draw/survey pages. Well we've now been slapped across the board on almost all of our sites and this is the email google sent regarding one of our prize draw pages. "I have heard back from our Quality team regarding your landing page quality. They have confirmed that the quality review of your site was correct and that your current landing page quality is very poor. Sites that do not include useful content, products and/or services for Internet users are often difficult to advertise efficiently and effectively. Based on user feedback, we have found that low quality sites lead to a poor user experience. Furthermore, unhappy users are less likely to click on AdWords ads. In addition, advertisers with quality sites have higher advertising costs when they are forced to compete with ads for poor quality sites. AdWords provides the best results when both users and advertisers have a positive advertising experience. According to our review, *OurDomain* is a poor quality page. Your landing page will continue to require higher bids in order to display your ads, resulting in a very low return on your investment. In our call earlier you asked if there was any particular changes that you could make to improve the quality reading of the site. The feedback is that this is very unlikely. Therefore, AdWords may not be the online advertising programme for this particular website and/or business." I then sent them an email asking them why our competitors are still allowed ads in the top positions for landing pages that are qualitatively similar to the one discussed in the above email. They responded by saying that they will get around to shagging those sites also. For the quizzes, we're trying to build portal pages that have lots of fresh relevant content, hoping for a better landing page assessment. Regarding the site discussed above, the only idea we can come up with to continue to use adwords is to switch domains and try to stay one step ahead. That way they'll have to chase us. What do you think?
Are you really surprised? Data Collection sites are the first ones listed on the landing pages that will receive a poor quality score post.
Well I'm surprised that it's taken them around 410 Million impressions and over a year to work out that this is what we do. Other than that, not at all. The question remains, what effect will changing the domain have?
My hunch is that if you're just changing the domain you buy yourself a little time but they will apply the same poor QS to the landing page on the new domain once it's noticed.
Yes that's my prediction also but it will buy us some time. They say that there's nothing that can be done to improve the quality score of the page but we're determined to make them content rich.
What Google is really telling you is they don't want your AdWords business - "Therefore, AdWords may not be the online advertising programme for this particular website and/or business" Content won't help at all - after they determine that your in the data collection game they will give you a poor landing page quality score regardless of what you have on the page.
I have to agree with this. I have put in COUNTLESS hours trying to "fix" some data collection sites QS issues and it appears that they have all been given a scarlet letter. Your best bet at this stage is to look for other alternative advertising methods. Maybe even look at MS adcenter.
Mmm, perhaps we should resort to terrorism. At this year's Ad:tech in London there was a stand where you could slap a google representative across the face for free. A shame I walked on by.
I do understand Google's position on the matter. From their perspective it makes sense to keep the searching public happy. We're going to try to use a custom landing page which is rich in content that links to the conversion page. Thoughts?
If you're still a "data collection" site content and links won't help, Google will manually assign a poor landing page QS to the page/site.
By that logic, any landing page that linked to one of our survey pages would be banned by adwords, regardless of why or how I'm talking about having a genuinely rich, relevant and unsalesy page that has a subtle and non-central link saying something like 'Win a Mini'. Our conversion rate will suffer, as will our CPA, but I think it's worth a try.
I'm not justifying it, just laying it out as presented by Google. If they think a site is a data collection site they will give it a poor landing page QS reagrdless of it's content/links/etc. The key there is "they think" because at the end of the day that's what counts in this case.
Does having one "data collection" campaign adversely affect all other campaigns on the same account even if they are not data collection?
So, seriously, every time you get slapped you just shift to a new domain? Guys, stop worrying if that's the case. You can get disposable domain names for like $4.
I understand Google slapping the contest and survey sites. But do you think Google also considers squeeze pages to be "data collection"? If so do you recommend sending buyers direct to the sales letter and not try to capture their email to send them an autoresponder? Thanks, Johnny
You have a couple options: 1.) take the new domain route, they'll catch you eventually though 2.) go blackhat and cloak things 3.) rework your strategy so your landing pages look like things that google really likes, (put your collection stuff on pages one step away from the landing page) 4.) use yahoo search marketing or msn adcenter instead
You say you're going to create "content-rich" landing pages. That's nice and all, but what are you offering me? I don't think giving me the 'chance to win a Mini' is going to make a difference. I can get those anywhere, and in the end, you have my data for, in effect, giving me nothing. Not surprised you're getting slapped.