Google AdWords Announcement

[getvisible]

Tweet

what about merchants on multiple networks?

[Supercod]

From what I am understanding, and I might be missing information at this point.. is it's 1 url to land on, so it be only 1 person be it merchant, agency, network, affiliate on network a, affiliate on network b and so on that get listed for that sites landing domain. But like everyone here I don't know for sure yet.

[sticky]

I e-mailed to find out when exactly these new rules comes into force and they said in the next few weeks

they also said

Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be
affected by this change. Please remember that your Display URL must match
the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site.
Also, we don't allow ads that redirect to the parent company's site if the
domain name of the Destination URL differs from the Display URL.

[trafficbroker]

I e-mailed to find out when exactly these new rules comes into force and they said in the next few weeks

I spoke to my google rep today. The middle of next week was suggested as the date, probably Wednesday. This is also the day (Wed 12th) suggested on WMW.

I hope all the direct to merchant PPC'ers either prepared well or have plenty of pro plus and red bull at the ready, a dummies guide to HTML and no plans for the next fortnight

[AffManagement]

As most know, with adwords you can throw in your Affiliate link with keyword tracking attached, thus keywords show up in stats along with sales etc etc

Thinking along the lines of building landing pages for each adword campaign, can anyone suggest an obvious/easy to implement solution to continue tracking the adwords keywords as they come through the landing page then onto affiliate network?

As essentially with a landing page you,ll only have one referral link which is no good at all.

[ianm]

Originally posted by AffManagement
can anyone suggest an obvious/easy to implement solution to continue tracking the adwords keywords as they come through the landing page then onto affiliate network?

As essentially with a landing page you,ll only have one referral link which is no good at all.

Learn PHP! All you have to do is pass the keyword as a variable and then use PHP to insert that into the tracking part of the affiliate link.

For example you could have
landingpage.php?kw=widget
landingpage.php?kw=widgets

Both go to the same page, but when you build your links you use $kw to add the keyword to all the affiliate links.

You can also use the passed value to alter other parts of the content, so the user sees a page that is more relevant to what they searched for.

[AffManagement]

Thanks Ian lol thats among a list of new year resies, for now I,ll get someone to have a look at doing what you suggest.

Cheers, Neil...

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Brand names to one side.

I wonder how many merchants are suddenly going to start insisting that traffic cannot be sent to them directly via Google adwords.

We intend to stand firm on this one, if they do, we will simply find an alternative merchant - end of story

[bulbo]

First thing I realised when I went to Google Adwords to sort something out was that Destination URL can be around 1024 characters long, whereas Display URL can only be around 35 characters.

Makes it a little difficult for those who use our own sites with dynamically created pages with php scripts etc (URLs tend to be quite massive!).

Going to have to redo my method of page referencing or something

[aotagain]

Can anyone clarify which URL's they are talking about having to be unique ? I presume they mean display not destination (although both have to be same main URL).

Also when they talk about redirect, does that mean auto-redirect or is it OK to have a countdown and redirect, or will we have to use the dreaded 'Click here to visit our site'.

Could be a real pain because we run some sites off a 'parent' URL database, using relevant domains in the Adwords ads.

I can accept stopping redirects using 'false' domains to go to irrelevant parent sites, but we're just using very relevant subdirectories in the parent site to ease the process of keeping merchant data. Keeping it all in one database, with some heavy duty code to distribute it is much easier once set up than managing a load of separate sites.

[drivetowin]

As I read it I think any form of redirect, whether with a countdown or otherwise, will not be allowed

[km8]

Originally posted by bulbo
First thing I realised when I went to Google Adwords to sort something out was that Destination URL can be around 1024 characters long, whereas Display URL can only be around 35 characters.

Makes it a little difficult for those who use our own sites with dynamically created pages with php scripts etc (URLs tend to be quite massive!).

Going to have to redo my method of page referencing or something

Read the Adwords FAQ.
You can shorten the display URL.

[Luke]

I wonder if we'll start to see merchants banning ppcing on their affiliate accounts altogether? Then they don't have to compete.

Especially if their PPC is being managed by online marketing agencies that also manage their aff marketing...

[trafficbroker]

I wonder if we'll start to see merchants banning ppcing on their affiliate accounts altogether? Then they don't have to compete

If they do then good luck to them, they'll need it. A full-time PPC'er would put together a campaign 10 times better than one they could do themselves or their agency even. I'd like to see how they fair when we change our links to their competitors who still welcomed our expertise.

[BrokerG]

On various forums, I've seen various reactions to this situation.
A lot of posters have been of the opinion - " sod Google, we know better' , a lot have said "let's bluff it out, we will win through". The majority of aff peeps have kept quiet...I think the best of the bunch have seen this coming and have already worked out their own solutions.

I look forward to seeing how things develop!