Google is telling everyone that it will no longer accept destination URLs that don’t match the display URL. This change will go into effect on April 1.
This really isn’t a change in policy. It’s a change in the enforcement of the policy, which has been in place for some time. But Google wasn’t enforcing it for every advertiser so some pay per click advertisers were getting away with using URLs that didn’t match the destination URL.
This doesn’t mean that the two URLs have to be an exact match. It means that the destination URL must be on the same domain as the display URL. In other words, if your pay per click ad’s disply URL is www.mydomain.com then your destination URL must be a page on that domain. It can’t be a redirected URL or cloaked in any way. You can still use tracking codes, but I wonder if Google will allow tinyurls or other short versions of URLs in lieu of destination URLs. What do you think?
It reminds me of a parent who says they are going to punish the child for something and then never does. IMHO, showing a display URL that is different than the destination URL is PPC spam and it’s about time Google started to enforce this policy. Thanks for the post!
Frankly, I’m sick of Google. Yeah yeah, I know it’s blah blah and all that. I switched PPC advertising over to Yahoo, which isn’t as profitable, but is considerably more friendly.
The last straw was trying to access my OWN bookmarks in Internet Explorer (I usually use Firefox). Google wanted me to sign into my account before I could use my own bookmarks. That’s getting a tad too “Big Brother” for me. So I pulled out.
Will I go back to Google? Not if I can avoid it.