Hi, I read on the google TOS that your landing page is not allowed to redirect to another site, and that your landing page must not frame, copy, or basically "feel" like another website. But I see tons of affiliates doing exactly that so their ads get maximum exposure. Isn't that risky? Won't google close my account if I do this? How is everyone getting away with it?
Are you sure the landing pages are framing the merchant sites? I look at hundreds of affiliate Adwords ads every week and I've never seen this. What I do see is affiliates linking directly to the merchant site - which is fine by Google. BTW, Google staff are taught how to easily detect 100% frames of other sites, so I don't suggest anyone should try it.
(not "google staff" it's the Google Ads-Bot that automatically and regularly check landing pages and sites) And yeah it depends on if affiliates use already made templates, or if they 100% frame another website. In both cases, they are likely to be penalised and affected by landing page quality. Pretty quickly if they frame another website and after a while if they use the same template as others. they will see their min bids increasing more and more to reach one morning 4 or 8 $ or €. in this case they can forget about using the same domain with adwords I think... and it'd be even advised to open a new account as this one might be affected as well, because of this.