Do subdomains in Display URL need to resolve to an actual webpage?

Hi there,

Have a quick question about using subdomains in my display URL. e.g Terrier.DogTrainingGuide.com.

Does the URL actually need to load a page and will you get penalized if it doesnt?

My destination URL is something like www.DogTraining.com so the subdomain is used purely for ad text relevance and if you try to load it in a browser you'd get a server not found error.

 

No it doesn't.
I have many ads with non-existent display URLs and they do very well.

 

Hade is correct, it makes no difference if your display URL shows a real page/subdomain name. We actually took Google up on their offer to optimize one of our campaigns, and she created ALL ads with our actual URL + keyword(s) added to the end; they all look like they point to subdomains, but go nowhere.

 

Yes, display url only need match top level domain of destination url is OK.

 

Am i reading this correctly?

So you can have www.mysite.com/page

page doesn't actually exist but thats fine for display Url?

 

Yes, you are. You can use the space after your top level domain to put pretty much what you like as long as it is relevant to the destination (Not much point in putting anything irrelevant, anyway!) You can also leave out the "www." to give yourself more space to play with.

 

Thanks bjewelled, that flexibility is nice, as you say, as long as its relevant to the destination.