Should I change my destination url in Adwords ?

[AbhijeetM]

Hi All,

I launched an adwords campaign 2 days back which is doing kinda ok. The conversion isn't good yet but impressions, click throughs and ad positions are ok for a 2 days old campaign.

Now the thing is that my landing pages are static .htm pages and I need to change them to PHP. The only change which I need to make in the destination urls would be replacing .htm with .php, that's it.

But I am not sure if I should do that because after doing some research I found out that changing the destination urls would mean starting from scratch again and history would be gone. Do you think even making a slight change in the destination url would cause Google to re-evaluate the entire ad and the campaign ? Anyone who has done that in the past ? I'd love to know how did that affect your campaign.

Thanks,
Abhijeet

[Ed Zivkovic]

Originally Posted by AbhijeetM

But I am not sure if I should do that because after doing some research I found out that changing the destination urls would mean starting from scratch again and history would be gone.

I am not an expert about PPC but I am not sure about that one. What exactly does the source of the information say? (I'm keen to know coz I do have some campaigns running.)

Originally Posted by AbhijeetM

Do you think even making a slight change in the destination url would cause Google to re-evaluate the entire ad and the campaign ?

In my estimation, it is the content on the landing page that gets evaluated, not the URL.

Personally, if I have to make such a change I do. I make changes while split testing, so what's the difference? The real way to find out what's going to happen is to do it. If the sky fall down, you can always change it back.

[Lucid]

You should be able to change the URL with no problem.

[Zach Booker]

Wouldn't think there'd be a problem bud.

Not sure what tracking your doing, but make sure your doing some!

Zach

[AbhijeetM]

Originally Posted by Ed Zivkovic

I am not an expert about PPC but I am not sure about that one. What exactly does the source of the information say? (I'm keen to know coz I do have some campaigns running.)



In my estimation, it is the content on the landing page that gets evaluated, not the URL.

Personally, if I have to make such a change I do. I make changes while split testing, so what's the difference? The real way to find out what's going to happen is to do it. If the sky fall down, you can always change it back.

Originally Posted by Lucid

You should be able to change the URL with no problem.

I can't post a link since my post count hasn't reached 15 but I came across an elaborate article explaining why changing any variable in your adwords ad could adversely affect the QS. If you google " changing destination urls in adwords ", you would 2-3 such articles on the first page.

Also, whenever you try to edit an ad, Google pops up a yellow colored warning box saying the statistics will begin at zero ( in the new interface ).

So now you know why I am worried.

Originally Posted by Zach Booker

Wouldn't think there'd be a problem bud.

Not sure what tracking your doing, but make sure your doing some!

Zach

I am yet to decide between affiliate prophet and Prosper202. And both of them need that my destination urls be edited. Right now I am using Google Analytics and doing some manual tracking.

[Lucid]

First, never edit an ad, it's the same as deleting it. Pause it and create a new one. You don't know if you'll need that ad again. By simply pausing it, you can un-pause it later if you need it.

Second, you should always, always test new ads. You want higher CTRs, QS and lower CPC don't you? Of course having a new ad may not have the effect you hoped for. In that case, drop it and try something else.

Each change in your ad, no matter how minor, creates a new unique ad. Each ad is tracked by Google with a unique identifier. So there is no such thing as history. You create a new history for each ad!

If you are worried about affecting anything, stick with the ad(s) you have now. You know the results you are getting so don't expect things to change.

[__internet__]

The history is gone if you change the location of the link. That is how Google Adwords works. I would recommend doing it if you are not seeing good results. Why are you changing it from .htm to .php anyway?

[John Hocking]

if you make any change to an ad, Adwords creates a new ad and you resets the stats.

if you host your site on an Linux/unix, you can configure the .htaccess file to
parse html files as php and keep the extension as html/htm

here is an article on how to do it.
Learning Journal - Parsing PHP in .html Files