The Dreaded Slap

[Vince Caso]

Hey all,

I'm sure most, if not all, of the members here are perfectly familiar with the dreaded "Google Slap"s that started getting dished out in mass only a short while ago.

My question is, what did you do? I'm certainly not asking for any trade secrets here, but am genuinely curious as to how, as a marketer, you handled the hurdle of the "slap" that effectively barred AdWords from easy use.

Honestly, I'm pretty tweaked that I didn't get my ads out and running before the slaps started coming down back when. Needless to say, I've found a few alternatives.

So what do you think? Still using Google, maybe with a blog instead? Or have you just abandoned it entirely for other, more friendly, ad networks?


Thanks,
Vince

[dburk]

Hi Vince,

I assume the Google Slap you are referring to is the "Bridge Page" crackdown Google has done recently. This mostly just affects folks that were doing affiliate marketing. It seems that many affiliate managers do not allow or provide a link to their checkout page and this forces advertisers to build what Google classifies as a "bridge Page" which is prohibited under policies.

If you follow policies and guidelines you will not have an issue. The problem with affiliate marketing is that you often do not control the landing page content. If you are not able to link directly to the checkout page, you become liable for anything the affiliate puts on their landing page. This makes it awkward for both the affiliate marketer and the merchant since they must trust each other and suffer equally in the consequences of the other parties behavior.

[Vince Caso]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Vince,

I assume the Google Slap you are referring to is the "Bridge Page" crackdown Google has done recently. This mostly just affects folks that were doing affiliate marketing. It seems that many affiliate managers do not allow or provide a link to their checkout page and this forces advertisers to build what Google classifies as a "bridge Page" which is prohibited under policies.

If you follow policies and guidelines you will not have an issue. The problem with affiliate marketing is that you often do not control the landing page content. If you are not able to link directly to the checkout page, you become liable for anything the affiliate puts on their landing page. This makes it awkward for both the affiliate marketer and the merchant since they must trust each other and suffer equally in the consequences of the other parties behavior.

I'm not actually referring to affiliate marketing. Even the use of static capture pages for your own website, products, etc gives you 1/10 quality scores, and sometimes account deletion (but that happens more or less at random).

Was wondering how people try to handle that. Personally, I just don't even bother using Google anymore...

Vince