Google Adwords Policy and Laptops For Less - Part 1

I'm going to pause for a post on my series of How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Program and change the subject a bit. As I have been writing the series much has changed within the world of search and I just wanted to offer my take on the changes as I see it.

Google Ad Word and Affiliates Policy

On January 6th, Google announced new rules restricting the display of AdWords ads by Affiliates. Starting in the next week or two Google will no longer show multiple ads that all point to the same domain.

Let's see some examples of current Google Sponsored Links:

Example #1
Laptops For Less
Welcome to the world of mobile
computing at Laptops for Less. aff
www.LaptopsForLess.com

Example #2
LapTopsForLess.com
Top Selection - Lap Tops Galore
Special Offers - Premier Affiliate
www.LapTopsForLess.com

Example#3
LaptopsForLess.com
Get discount batteries for laptops,
cameras, camcorders, more! Aff
www.laptopsforless.com
California

Example #4
Laptops For Less
Find over 700 Accessories for
Mobile Products & More! Aff.
www.laptopsforless.com

As you can see each Affiliate ad above has been using the same Display URL (the URL listed in the ad).

Instead, they will only list the highest ranking ad for that domain. As the new policy states "we'll only display one ad per search query for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same URL."
The change will affect Affiliates in two ways:

1. Affiliates no longer need to identify themselves as an affiliate in your ad text. This is a good change because of the restricted advertising space alotted in Adwords this should allow for more creativity in the messaging ad text.
2. Since only the highest paid advertiser will be able to occupy the domain name of the Laptops For Less you will more than likely have to create a sales landing page to lead PPC traffic to before you lead them over to the specific Laptops For Less page you are targeting.

As affiliates of Laptops For Less realize we employ a lot of unique domains across our company. But if we read the language of the policy change it specifically says "Affiliates or advertisers using unique URLs in their ads will not be affected by this change. Please note that your Display URL must match the URL of your landing page, and you may not simply frame another site." This really open's a can of worms specific to Laptops For Less.

What I know to be acceptable is and Affiliate ad like:

Laptops For Less - Sale
Laptop & PDA Batteries & much more
Buy Online & Save Money
www.your-website.com/LaptopsForLess

This form of Adwords Advertising not only meets Google's new ad policy but it also allows you to focus in on consumer content. This is good! As many of you already know with the Laptops For Less Affiliate program creating content with our program is so easy because of all of our tools we have available.

Here are the tools:

External Datafeed Manager: Complete Feed Management
Product Display Maker
Direct Link Maker:
Search Link Maker:
Search Form Maker:

In my next post I will define precisely how we will permit our Affiliates from bidding on keywords and be able to use our domains according to Google's policies.

Until next time!