Guidelines to Avoid the Google Adwords Slap

By Guest Account
Guidelines to Avoid the Google Adwords Slap

 

The following blog post is a guest post by Clickbank Account Specialist, Jeni Rogers.

As you already may be aware, Google has recently stepped up their quality enforcement activities. ClickBank is working closely with Google to learn more about quality guidelines so we can provide information on best practices to our clients on how to avoid a Google Slap. The term "Google Slap" is typically used to describe a situation when an AdWords ad’s Quality Score has been lowered, affecting traffic flow to that site. In rare situations, it can even result in an account being banned from advertising on Google. The purpose of the Quality Score reflects Google’s mission to deliver high quality and relevant information to online searchers and applies to ads as well as natural search results. Google would rather show no ads than what it deems to be poor quality ads. Google uses the following factors when calculating a Quality Score:

  1. Clickthrough Rate (CTR): Google looks at the historical ad performance and considers this to be one of the most important variables in the Quality Score.
  2. Real-Time Relevancy: Google looks at the relevancy of the site to the search conducted.
  3. Landing Page: Google looks at the landing page to ensure that the results are unique and relevant to the search conducted. A low landing page score can be due to factors such as:
  • Irrelevant results or arbitrage sites that are designed just to show ads
  • Attempts that trick or try to gather leads or serve ads while providing no information or value
  • Annoying page elements such as popovers/unders, exit scripts, long videos that cannot be paused or stopped
  • Sites that distribute malware (knowingly or unknowingly)
  • Sites that advertise excessive or unverifiable claims such as "guaranteed"
  • Affiliate sites that don’t comply with Google’s affiliate guidelines

ClickBank advises that you use this information as a guideline to check your page for elements that may violate their rules, change them and resubmit to Google if you are affected by the Google Slap. In certain instances, ClickBank may be able to assist in the discussion with Google. Please contact me for more information.

ClickBank recently conducted a webinar series on "Avoiding the Google Slap" which was hosted by Dush Ramachandran, VP Sales of Business Development. For additional details, please view the video available.

You might also like to review the post we did a while back on How to Avoid a Google Slap.

 

Note: The views and opinions of the author of this guest post may not represent the views and opinions of Affilorama.

12 Comments
Justin From Affiliate Freedom 14 years ago
Those are great pointers. I also like to make sure that my site has a lot of incoming links to it as well as links to that particular landing page.

Another thing I like to do is to make sure that all the words that are in my ad, are actually on the text of my landing page. It seems to have been working for me.

I've been finding that CTR is king. At least for me recently. :)
joseph mccaffrey 14 years ago
Very sound advice. It really is about good business ethics. succeed by delivering value, not by trying to scam or game the system. Google isn't evil. They just want to provide value for the folks using the search engines. If you do that as an advertiser they treat you as a valued partner - no slaps involved.
Chris G | Work From Home Blog 14 years ago
Great article, and very sound advice.

Thanks,

Chris
Ray Van Hoff 14 years ago
This is valuable info. Thanx for the tips! Thank you JMight for the additional tip. I definately intend to go through my content to correct errors.
thanx again
caretakerray :)
Gary Teeling 14 years ago
This is good advice, but regarding CTR, what is an acceptable rate to Google - is 1% good or bad? At what CTR level do you have to duck to avoid the slap?
ryanda jones 14 years ago
great thanks new knowledge
sunnyakc 14 years ago
yes, this is a great views,but i dont google adwords,guys give me a points about it??? thanks
Asbar 14 years ago
You Have A gReat blog Its Helped me Alot In Inhancing My Information Thanks.AdWords is a number’s game. This article explains why CTR is important and how to improve yours. What is CTR CTR is the percentage of viewers that actually click on your ad. CTR is different from impressions, which is the number of people who view your ad, whether they click through or not.
garry johnson 13 years ago
Today, many people are looking for ways to earn extra money from home, either to supplement their income or to replace their income. Selling ebooks has become quite popular as an automated way for many to make money. Ads are posted announcing these ebooks for sale, the customer clicks on a link, pays for the ebook, the money is deposited in the seller’s account and the customer downloads the ebook. Simple and quick!
PLR private label rights
garry
Jorg 13 years ago
PLR are very good. You can create a website and all you have to do is start a google adWords Campaign.
Does anyone know of a good google adWords tutorial e-Book?
Vince 13 years ago
Hi Jorg, check out my site for Google Adwords tutorial. :)
Ofer Shoshani 12 years ago
Hi,

Just a short note that AdwordsRecovery.com (which deals a lot with Google slaps, Google dance, Adwords policy ec.) has moved to Affiliates.info, after Google request.

You can now get all the information about how to avoid Google Slap in http://affiliates.info/adwords-approval-policy-explained/