Can I do a redirection on my landing page?

Hi,

My current destination url is in the format http://www.mydomain.com/index.htm?ref=google.

I use the 'ref=google' to keep track how productive my adwords ads are. However, I have come to realize that some users bookmark this url, such that the next time they come back to the page, google gets credit for it. I only want google to get credit for bringing users the first time, not subsequent times.

So, I was thinking of putting a code so that when the url has 'ref=google', it will do an automatic redirection of users to the page http://www.mydomain.com/index.htm.

It's really redirection to the same page, but I have read somewhere that Google does not like redirection and my ad quality might suffer if I do this.

Is this true? Or shall I not worry about it?

Regards,
Min

 

No is not true. You are free to redirect to use your stats technics and AdWords will use the very last landing page as destination url for ad revision, quality calculation, etc..

 

I have what I think is the same question. I've got a client that we want to put the site/keyword information from our ads into their order system, and the way that our team is proposing to do it so far is to have one landing page ("www.mysite.com/landingpage.aspx?site=google&keyword=keyword&redirect=www.mysite.com/productpage.html") so that we don't have to build the system to log this information for every page in the site, just on this one page.

But my concern is that Google will evaluate the landingpage.aspx page, rather than the /productpage.html site.

Can anyone else confirm what Micromag says, that they will use the end page (not that I don't believe you Micromag--just would like to hear from 2-3-10 people who all say the same thing)?

And/or that the redirect will NOT impact our quality score?

Seems to me if they're checking to make sure that you don't redirect to an affiliate site, that they may not like you redirecting at all...although also seems to me that they shouldn't care if you're redirecting within your own site, so long as the end page that you land on is relevant to the ads...

Thanks.

Toonces51

 

I emailed Google to ask about my question, and here's their reply:

I don't know for sure about Toonces51's case. Maybe you can verify with their customer service. It took me about a day and a half to get an answer.

Rgds,
Min

 

I did get a response from Google on this as well:

'Your landing page Quality Score is based on the final destination URL that users clicking on your ads are directed to, not any sites used for redirect purposes.'

So yeah, redirects are ok.

Toonces51