Would Google penalize me for creating two different ads (which might appear together on the same page), which would link to different domains, if those domains were just landing pages that contained a link to the SAME domain that actually sold what I’m trying to sell (or to a site of which I am an affiliate)?
If they are in the same account, you can link to different domains, pages or anything else you like (subject to Google's TOS). If they are in different accounts, then no - you can't. http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47164
Thanks for your reply. In the page you linked to, it says: "Google does not permit multiple ads from the same or affiliated company or person to appear on the same results page. We believe that pages with multiple ads from the same company provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for our users." My question, to make it more clear with an example, is: Say there is a website called Website.com, and I am an affiliate of Website.com. And say I own BlueWebsites.com and BigWebsites.com. I set up those websites as simple targeted landing pages which each include a link Website.com I create Adwords ads linking to BlueWebsites.com that will appear when people search for terms related to blue websites, and other ads linking to BigWebsites.com that will appear for search terms related to big websites. So far so good. If someone searches for "Big Blue Websites", Google might have ads for BOTH of my landing pages appear on the same page. After all, the landing pages are on different domains, so Google would not know that they are actually promoting the same company. Could I get penalized for THAT? It seems sensible for me, but also seems contrary to Google's policy of avoiding multiple ads for the same company on the same page. Thanks.
It's not allowed - Google's policy doesn't ban domains from bidding twice on the same keyword, it bans advertisers and affiliates from bidding on the same keyword. The only exception Google lists is : -- The destination site for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on keyword 'electronics'). and -- Each destination site has a different layout and design, and each URL and domain is different. So you can only do this if you have completely seperate businesses, offering different products, on different websites. The fact that you have the same products on multiple domains doesn't allow you to have multiple accounts.