I have a beautiful, custom-content niche site. I was successful for two glorious weeks in buying Adwords traffic at low CPCs because I enjoyed a high quality score. Had great CTRs to an affiliate offer and was already buying a second home in my mind. Alas, it all came to a crashing halt when my Adwords quality scores fell through the floor. Same site, same content - just quality scores dove. The main money-making link on the site was to an affiliate offer - but it was through a PHP redirect (e.g., "whiteteeth.php"). I had used a subdomain redirect before (e.g., whiteteeth.example.com), which at least at the time was working, but I wanted to implement Tracking202 and you can't really do that with a subdomain redirect. The offer also included one of those "Special Offer Good Until ____" php scripts, where it was always good until today. Converted well, that's for sure. In your collective wisdom, did I get shot down because Adwords was able to somehow see through the PHP redirect into the affiliate link? Or because of the "Good Until..." script? The content itself was straightforward blog content, and totally worth the good quality score. Just general information on the niche category. And again, the quality score on the content was 7 for two weeks before diving. I'm 100% sure I got shot because of the affiliate link or the "good until" thing. Don't want to flirt with getting suspended, of course, but even if I do this approach with other offers I wanted to understand where I dropped the ball.
As per Adwords policies, you have a bridge page. Doesn't matter if you "cloak" it, an affiliate link is an affiliate link. It always makes me laugh to hear people think cloaking changes things or that Google can't detect them. If you don't want to lose your account, delete everything to do with such pages. Restart new campaigns where you link directly to the affiliate.
You must be laughing quite a bit. Good to hear what good cheer we're all bringing to you. The site I'm referring to is a 30-page weight loss site. There are no ads anywhere on the site, except for the one page on which the affiliate link exists. It's very hard for me to believe that Google would consider it a "bridge page", which I take to mean a page that only refers to the single affiliate product. Has anyone else had any issues with the "good until ..." today's date offers? Or is the thought that all affiliate links to places like Neverblue and Maxbounty get dinged by Adwords, whether or not the links are cloaked? I certainly agree that Google can likely see through all cloaking eventually - they practically invented what we know of as the Internet.
Sounds like you got hit with a manual review. The googlebots first evaluated your site and gave you decent QS But eventually every adwords ad gets reviewed manually If the person who reviews it thinks it looks spammy or low-quality, you get dinged big time If they viewed it as a bridge page, they would disapprove the ad and you'd get a not-so-friendly email telling you so This is purely a human decision that they don't think your site is a good user experience. Watch your back. Google closes accounts like yours. I know from experience.
if your affiliate offer was a teeth whitening rebill scam, Google is on the warpath. This, along with detox kits, acai and any other affiliate offers which ask for your credit card (to pay for shipping), then hit your credit card for $79.95 a few days later are well and truely in their sights.
Deleting your adgroups and campaigns will not help. You have been "targeted". As someone else said these type of mechant trial offers with the small fine print saying you will be "billed $xx.xx until you cancel" are being purged by the Google Gods. Get ready for the "Final Warning" email.