Theory on recent Google slaps: double serve policy?

jakesellers · 08-01-2009, 02:04 PM

I think it's possible what's actually happening is a crackdown on double serves. Google doesn't want two ads with substantially similar landers for the same product from the same keywords.

Recently I was running a campaign with low-volume longtails that was doing pretty well and had no adsense competition. I scaled up to better and more expensive keywords, and noticed there was another ad for my new keywords that had a similar pre-sell for the same offer, but didn't think much of it at the time. Within 24 hours, slapped.

When I got lazy about landers a while ago and started running mostly DL, I caught slaps, but started doing tighter longtails and very outside-the-box keyword campaigns more in an effort to lower CPC than to reduce slaps. I didn't catch slaps going that direction but I thought it was more about low volume. My new take on it is it might actually be more about adwords competition.

So, for a given keyword, if there's two review-style landers linking to a given product, google might just be going through, saying "two (or more) review style sites with the same affiliate link, we're going to QS the worst-performing to 0 based on the double serve policity." This sort of thing happened to the physical product folks a while ago with things like ASoTV's, Google said "we don't need 30 ads landing in 30 generic shopping carts for george foreman grills" and slapped out all but the highest bidder, the slapped folks gave up and moved on (mostly) or adapted their landers.

It would make sense that Google would keep quiet about doing this if that's what they're doing. I think they've found it's better to keep affiliate marketers guessing than to give information that can be exploited and gamed, as when they made clear to DL'ers multiple advertisers couldn't DL to the same URL, the networks that could doctored up URLs and redirects to make them DL-friendly, probably not the result Google was seeking.

Plausible?

08-01-2009, 02:04 PM	#1
jakesellers HyperActive Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 161 Blog Entries: 2 Thanks: 5 Thanked 24 Times in 20 Posts	Theory on recent Google slaps: double serve policy? I think it's possible what's actually happening is a crackdown on double serves. Google doesn't want two ads with substantially similar landers for the same product from the same keywords. Recently I was running a campaign with low-volume longtails that was doing pretty well and had no adsense competition. I scaled up to better and more expensive keywords, and noticed there was another ad for my new keywords that had a similar pre-sell for the same offer, but didn't think much of it at the time. Within 24 hours, slapped. When I got lazy about landers a while ago and started running mostly DL, I caught slaps, but started doing tighter longtails and very outside-the-box keyword campaigns more in an effort to lower CPC than to reduce slaps. I didn't catch slaps going that direction but I thought it was more about low volume. My new take on it is it might actually be more about adwords competition. So, for a given keyword, if there's two review-style landers linking to a given product, google might just be going through, saying "two (or more) review style sites with the same affiliate link, we're going to QS the worst-performing to 0 based on the double serve policity." This sort of thing happened to the physical product folks a while ago with things like ASoTV's, Google said "we don't need 30 ads landing in 30 generic shopping carts for george foreman grills" and slapped out all but the highest bidder, the slapped folks gave up and moved on (mostly) or adapted their landers. It would make sense that Google would keep quiet about doing this if that's what they're doing. I think they've found it's better to keep affiliate marketers guessing than to give information that can be exploited and gamed, as when they made clear to DL'ers multiple advertisers couldn't DL to the same URL, the networks that could doctored up URLs and redirects to make them DL-friendly, probably not the result Google was seeking. Plausible?