Redirecting AdWords Display URLs
-
I feel it's a best practice (from a user experience POV) to create a 301redirect when using a fictitious display URL in your PPC ads. And according to the AdWords help page (http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175906&rd=2) Google doesn't have an issue using a redirect. "Redirects used for tracking purposes are fine as long as the final landing page has the same domain as the display URL."
I'm curious if there is ad score penalty if one does not ionclude a redirect - i.e. the user types in your display URL and gets a 404. Has anyone seen an evidence of this?
-
Thanks for the reply. As managing web production is one of my responsibilities reducing the number of 404s for a 600K site has priority (for me - hence the question). Our company has 40 plus active campaigns and countless ad groups - and therefore thousands of display URLs. My motivation in asking this question is to reduce 404s - if I can convince our paid search staff that there is value (other than less work for me) to following a best practice, then I might expect a degree of buy-in on their part.
As Pashima alludes to below, from a conversion standpoint making your landing page relevant to your ad and search terms would seem the goal for a company like Google that professes to be all about the UX. not to mention your own internal ROI tracking.
-
That's no longer accurate as of recent changes to the QS algo. Goole announced that LP quality and UX will play a larger role in the calculation of your QS. (http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/ads-quality-improvements-rolling-out.html)
I'd bet that the quality of your LPs will become even more significant as our web space and Adwords matures.
-
My ads that have fictitious display URLs that are specific to the keyword I'm targeting tend to have higher CTRs, so they get clicked more, which is good for keyword quality scores, so really you're rewarded for it, not penalized!
People don't visit those display URLs very often. However, some of the fictitious display URLs pop up in Webmaster Tools from time to time... it looks like Google finds them on sites that scrape Adwords ads.
-
In the grand scheme of things, with all of the different things that as search marketers we have to worry about, this is WAY down on the priority scale. Specifically when looking at AdWords, the idea of landing page plays a small role in quality score.
Check out this from Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian who breaks down quality score. I would say it's a slight over simplification, but he's saying quality score breaks down as the following:
60% is CTR
30% is 'Relevance'
10% is Landing Page
-
THX for your feedback Pashima - we actually have seen a few cases of it (I would believe from users that remember a display URL for later use). But as a percentage of all visits it's infinitesimal.
I actually misstated the adscore question, as of course Google has no idea if the URL was manually entered. I should have asked "Does Google check to see if the display URL actually goes to a landing page and if not, is there an adscore penalty". -
There is no penalty. If someone manually types in your redirect URL, they've broken the connection from the Adwords ad completely. On the other hand, Google does track 404 errors on your site, and any 404 error will affect your SEO and overall site rankings.
While I agree it makes for nice UX, I think creating a 301 redirect from the fictitious display URL to the actual landing page is overkill. I have never seen any 404 errors in my logs of a person manually typing in a display URL. People are inherently lazy. They will mouse and click.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Approximate costs of keywords in Google AdWords
Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how to go about getting some approximate costs for keywords through Google Adwords to assist my SEO efforts. I don't want to open an AdWords account, just looking for costs. If the pricing is too high then the opened account was a waste of time. So if anyone has any resources to find out this information, that would be great! Thanks in advance!
Paid Search Marketing | | MainstreamMktg0 -
AdWords Match rule for "&" and "and"
Howdy, folks 🙂 Here is a question - is there way to have an AdWords matching rule, which would cover both "&" and "and"? Here is an example - rule to match both "B & B" and "B and B". Any help appreciated 🙂
Paid Search Marketing | | DmitriiK0 -
Our PPC UTM URLs Aren't Registering In GA Properly
Hi, We recently ran a few ads on Facebook and Reddit for a campaign of ours. Each of the URLs were properly attributed UTM links. Some of them register properly in campaigns, but the vast majority aren't. I can only find the attribution by checking All Traffic and displaying the landing page and the source/medium. Our Facebook Ad Manager reports MANY more clicks than our Campaign section in GA is for the campaign name. Here's the URL I receive for the landing page: /?url=http://www.ourwebsiteurl.com/our-landing-page?utm_source=facebook.com&dm_redirected=true Is Facebook writing over our UTM with their own so all I receive is that it came from Facebook? The URL we used was complete with utm_source, utm_campaign and utm_medium, yet these aren't fully reported. Any ideas?
Paid Search Marketing | | kirmeliux0 -
How do I find AdWords campaign and adgroup ID numbers?
Is the only way to get them through the AdWords API? If so, how do I do that?
Paid Search Marketing | | Ericc220 -
AdWords Sitelinks Disapproved
Hello,
Paid Search Marketing | | Instabill
I cannot find a justifiable reason as to why Google AdWords has disapproved my sitelinks. 1. My link text is descriptive of each page. For instance, I use the link text "Merchant Accounts" for the URL http://www.instabill.com/services/merchant-accounts/ 2. I have four extensions within one campaign. Each have 5 sitelinks with all the same link text and destination URLs. However, only two of the "Merchant Accounts" sitelinks were disapproved from two out of the four extensions. Two "High Risk Accounts" linking to our High Risk Merchant Accounts page were disapproved out of my four extensions, one "Industries We Serve" to our eCommerce Industries page was disapproved, and one "Offshore Accounts to our Offshore Merchant Accounts page was disapproved. Why are some disapproved and not all? 3. I use Daddy Analytics to generate my destination URLs for tracking purposes, but I do not see this as being an issue since the URL still begins with the URL in bullet point 1. After reading a few threads within the AdWords community and reading the AdWords Sitelinks Guidelines, I feel as if I have followed the guidelines. Any helpful advice would be appreciated.0 -
Trademarked words in in Google Adwords ads - Why do competitors get to use them?
Hi, The keyword I want to use in my ad is trademarked, so they disqualified my ad. The trademark was specifically cited as the reasoning. I tried this across maybe 5 different ads. All disqualified The thing I don't understand is that there are like 10 other advertisers who are actively using this "trademarked" word in their ads. It's not like 1 scooted past Google, there's a ton of advertisers doing it. So how do I get past them or were they grandfathered in or something? FYI... I tried dynamic insert to see if that could my "trademarked" word in the back door, but no luck. Any other ideas? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | marketingcupcake0 -
Best method to measure conversions (Adwords)
Hi, I am a new member and fairly new to PPC. I have a service based site (car detailing) and I have been using Adwords for quite sometime now. My primary question is about tracking conversions. I have dedicated landing pages for each one of my ad groups (and some kw specific landing pages). When a potential customer lands on one of my pages - lets say my "car wash" page, they have the option to: Call from that page to book a service (I have a trackable number on that pages) Book online (its a 3rd party booking app with no tracking functionality) Continue to my main site for find out about our other services (I have a few outbound links set up on the page) But, I am running into problems when it comes to conversion tracking. I am not doing any call tracking via Adwords, so what would be the most effective way for me to track conversions? A) Should I set up event tracking in order to count outbound clicks as conversions? B) Should I remove all outbound links from that landing page and use the custom phone number on that page? My fear with this option is that customers may want to see additional services that are on my primary site. Therefore, I don't want to limit them to that landing page only. C) Should I use Adwords call tracking? If I go this route, I would have to decrease my campaign budgets in order to offset the call tracking costs. Or maybe there is another option I should consider that someone with more experience could offer. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
Paid Search Marketing | | Headwurdz0 -
Can I pass keyword match type through the Adwords dest URL?
Hi guys, I'm currently using duplicates of the same keyword with different match types, and I'd like to pass the keyword match type through the query, the same way I can pass the keyword and creative. ie. http://my.site.com/?kw={keyword}&kwmt={matchtype}&aid={creative} As far as I can tell, Google allows you to pass the keyword, creative (ad id), network and a mobile flag. Microsoft allows you to pass the match type and and ad id, and I want to be able to do the same in my Adwords. Is this is possible, or is the only way to create different ad groups for each match type and pass a custom query? Cheers, Jez
Paid Search Marketing | | jez0000