Quick Question: With the recent slap on affiliates by Google, how are people direct linking to CPA and CPS offers to test out conversions before investing time and money in a landing page or mini web site? According go Google TOS, my understanding is that that the domain name in Display URL must match that in Destination URL. For example. Display URL www.Google.com can have Destination URL maps.Google.com because the domain name is the same. But www.Google.com couldn't have destination URL of www.Bing.com because the domains are not the same. Take ClickBank for example. Direct Linking would be: Display Url: www.ClickBankProduct.com Destination Url: xxxxx.yyyyy.hop.clickbank.net ... and they don't match. A friend of mine recently had an account slapped because of this. After a huge email exchange, Google finally said this was why - violation of TOS - Destination URL not matching Display URL. If my friend uses Display Url: www.HisSite.com Destination Url: www.HisSite.com/redirect.php and the Landing Page (final destination) is www.ClickBankProduct.com is that allowed? Or will he be slapped again for the Landing Page being different. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
It is fairly easy to throw up a landing page. Direct linking is not a good idea. I know that does not work well for some products. Your domain needs to be relevant to your keywords. So if you are linking the way you described with a clickbank product or any product for that matter you are going to lose on precious quality scores. Which will allow you to get a lower CPC. I have heard some people state they have seen CTR improve 10 fold by URL alone. Which is another factor google takes into consideration when giving you a score. You can direct link. I just think doing it is not a good correlation to testing. By doing it you are losing out on how it would work for your landing page. Implementing and tweaking that should be where you start for any offer you run. You can easily get started with a landing page and site for less than $10 so I do not see why you wouldn't start there. I am not saying direct linking is all bad. It can be a good thing. I just think you don't always or should not start there.
No, that is not allowed. If the final destination is www.ClickBankProduct.com, that is the display URL you must use.
That's what I thought but I just talked with my friend again (it is his account) and he said that Google had told him the reason his account had gotten slapped is because of this: Display Url: www.ClickBankProduct.com Destination Url: xxxxx.yyyyy.hop.clickbank.net While the final destination was www.ClickBankProduct.com, Google based their slap on the fact what was inputted in as the Destination URL didn't match the Display URL. I though that was weird because I hear of people direct linking to products all the time in order to rest conversions so I am kind of wondering how they do it.
I tend to agree with you but convincing my friend of that is another thing altogether. Although, I have heard from somewhere that it is better to have a site with content, a privacy policy, site map, etc (basically a mini-site) rather than a single landing page to Google is cracking down on that as well. Is there any truth to that?
I've been telling people since July NOT to have bridge pages and to direct link. It seems most of my posts have been on this subject. Google has made that clear, at least it is clear to me. For some reason, people have got into their heads that direct linking is not allowed. That is not true. People bitch and complain and do nothing to correct and get their accounts banned. Well, I did sound the warning but few seem to listen. Just yesterday, someone who bought my book, where I also mention this, called and said "why" and "but Google doesn't allow direct linking". Ugh. As for your friend's problem, from the info you give, it seems like it should be OK. I would advise however to double-check everything. If the final destination URL - the one that shows in your browser's URL bar - is not the same as the display URL, that's the problem. If you are positive it is, I suggest to delete the ad and recreate it. Pay attention to spelling: one letter out of place will trigger this disapproval.
nyxano lets see if this helps you,what i want you to do is add a invisable line to the bottom so to speak and call it land page url Display Url: www.ClickBankProduct.com Destination Url: xxxxx.yyyyy.hop.clickbank.net land page url: www.ClickBankProduct.com and by this if you take the encripted hoplink in you destination url and select that ask this question, on what page does it land ( your invisable land page url) this land page url must match your display url. the physical destination url does not need match the display url as often it is an ecripted link, hope that helps yes build land sites not land pages
hey as per my knowledge, direct linking is not the best thing and you will not get proper result for some of the products also... so i think u should not go with it.....
Opinion seems to be divided about whether direct linking or the use of a landing page is better for AdWords. Certainly the experience of many who have had their AdWords accounts banned because their landing pages (or even full-blown landing sites) contained affiliate links would suggest that only direct linking is at all wise now. My own direct-linking campaigns have not brought me a ban - at least they haven't yet. However, I've read reports on other forums of discussions with Google reps where it was made clear that the affiliate model does not "fit" with Google advertising, however well-developed and high quality the affiliate site might be. It looks to me, at any rate, that the days of affiliate marketing of any type on Google AdWords are numbered - that their agenda is ultimately to divest themselves of all forms of affiliate advertising. The moral is, if you are an affiliate who is dependent only on Google advertising, you might be wise to begin developing alternative traffic streams as soon as possible.
Thats funny i just launched a new affiliate campaign site and have both sites and direct linking working, ?
Hi DownUnder, If you have not yet fallen foul of the policies that Google appears to be bringing to bear on AdWords accounts, that's great. I'm pleased for you - long may it continue. As I said, my own direct-linking campaigns have not so far brought me a ban. But, if you read the reports submitted by many advertisers on AdWords forums, can you be 100% sure that the axe won't fall on you at some point? And if you're not 100% sure, and if you're dependent on the income generated by your AdWords campaigns, have you begun preparations to cope with that awful possibility? A possibility which has become a reality for many affiliates.
Hey champ appreciate your call, and i hope all is good, to be honest i am not buying the whole the sky is falling stuff, yes i have had many sites that will not fire on google any more, i will agree on that but they were crap sites, everything i have now is firing well and i see no reason for it to stop. but yes i will not have all my eggs in one basket. cheers Pete
I definitely appreciate every ones input on the matter. I checked out the Google Adwords Help section and it appears they are definitely against what they call bridge pages - or one page landing sites where all it does is drive traffic to the parent company, or for us affiliates - the offer we are promoting. So that leaves either landing page sites with content, privacy policy page, etc - pages that meet their Webmaster Guidelines (also found in the help section), or direct linking. And I've heard of that as well... and my friend is one that got banned and they claim it was for incorrect direct linking (as explained in my original post) but I think he was a part of the affiliate crack down we are all hearing about. Whether it is an urban myth or not, who knows but there is a huge buzz around it and it wouldn't surprise me that after things like the Run Your Car on Water campaigns getting shut down, that Google decided to take a look at all affiliates in general and start cracking down on them. Sometimes Google reviews ads right away, and some times your ads will run for hours, days or even weeks and all of a sudden you log in and see no impressions, no clicks, and no explanation why. This is what happened to my friend and it took for ever to get Google to explain why. He had over 200 clicks and all of a sudden, not just his ad was slapped but any ad or even campaign he tried to put up after, nothing would be served. He didn't use a promotional code and his billing address and credit were all valid and real, so the only thing left to assume is he got slapped under this affiliate crack down. I personally had tried YSM a while back and while I did get some clicks, it wasn't that great. I tried Bing (AdCenter) and that sucked. So my own conclusion is that if you want to use PPC, go to AdWords but who wants to live in constant fear as to whether one day when you log in, you find your ads or even worse, your whole account was slapped - and slapped hard.
If Google are slapping/banning affiliates of any size (big or small) and regardless of their methods (direct linking or quality sites), then WHY do Google have their own AFFILIATE PROGRAM???
That is a very good question, and one I would also like to know the answer to. It occurred to me that one possible reason is that it might enable them to more closely monitor how affiliates operate.
The worst part is that there's no communication. G has to be the most arrogant company in the history of the world without comparison.