Google AdWords URL Policy Changes

How to Save Your Domain Based Campaigns?

Google has changed its ‘Ad URL’ policy and many owners of multiple domain names now have a problem. What can you do about the new rules and how to apply to the new URL policy without loosing valuable ground in your advertising campaign? And what about split testing of domain based campaigns?

In most cases it is still possible to use any domain you own and direct it to your landing page URL. And to overcome the question right away; no, it is no black hat tactics or cheap trick to fool Google, that wouldn’t be wise in any case, no, what I’m talking about here is legally assigning all your domain names you own to your main account domain.

Redirecting Domains / Domain Forwarding

According to the new rules it looks like this: If you are redirecting your URL’s to lead users, who click your Google ad, to your landing page, hosted on a different domain, you will be breaking the rules and Google will stop your ads from showing in some time soon. Not so if you park your domains.

What is Domain Parking?

A Parked Domain (or pointed domain) is a domain name that points to the same directory as your Primary domain. This means that the website of the parked domain will be the same as your-domain.com which is your Primary Domain. Caution though, you cannot ‘park’ a domain to an addon domain.

What are Addon Domains?

An Addon Domain is a domain name that points to a different subdirectory on your account. This gives you the ability to make it look like an entirely different website.

Additionally a sub domain will automatically be created. Let’s say you main account is www.your-domain.com and you add a new website on your account (Only possible if your host allows you to host multiple domain on your account) let’ say www.new-site.com , stored in a folder called ‘new-site’, the automatically assigned sub domain will be www.new-site.your-domain.com.

Taken the above example, you can only park one or more supplementary domains (unlimited on Blue Host) to www.your-domain.com, not to www.new-site.com neither to www.new-site.your-domain.com

How do I Park my Domains?

If your website(s) are e.g. hosted at Blue Host you can do the following:

1. Open ‘Parked Domains’ in your C-Panel and select one of the two options, existing or new domain name. In case you want to ad a domain name that is hosted by a different registrar, enter the EPP code in step two.

2. Choose ‘Parked domains’ in step three and click ‘Addon Domain’. That’s all you need to do.

You can now use the URL that has proven best for your campaign. Or any www.new-site.com address in the visible URL field in your Google AdWords ad and use the landing page URL, directing to your main account URL in the hidden field. Since Google will be widely ignoring the content of your new domain, you’re also not likely to loose any rankings and search engine position at Google for ‘duplicated content. The best part though is that you don’t have to let go of your most precious tool in AdWords, split testing.
Be wise though and do not submit your newly parked domain name to any search engine if you’re pushing it, you will end up getting punished for duplicated content. I have been showing you this on the example of http://www.bluehost.com/, where you can ‘life test’ the feature in a complete demo version. And sure, because I’m very familiar with this host, running several accounts here for many problem free years.

I know this is possible to do on other web hostings as well, but i obviously can’t give you the details on all of them. Check back with the domain support of your current host, the will explain to you what to do and how tom apply to the changes.
Even though Google is not likely to stop all ads not applying to the changes by April 1^st 2008, you should get onto it asap or you’re eventually gonna find your Google AdWords campaigns stopped.