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Google Adwords Affiliate Linking?

by hummy
4 replies
  • PPC/SEM
    • |
Hi All,

I wonder if someone can help. I used to do quite a bit of PPC stuff using adwords, but haven;t used it for a while. So trying to get back into the game.

Anyway, as far as i know, Google hates you redirecting to an affiliate offer whether that be direct linking or forwarding your domain name. So i decided to look into this a bit more to see if that was still the case, and it seems to be so.

However I came across this during my research. Check out the screen shot.



So when i click on the adwords link it just takes me straight through to the AMS Home page, so looks like domain forwarding to me. How would that have been approved? And how did they even manage to get this through.

I've also read alot on this forum about cloaking links for adwords, so that google sees one page and viewers see another. How does that work technically, and is it something that works well. Never personally done it, since i don;t know enough about it.

Thanks for your assistance going forward. Look forward to your replies?
#adwords #affiliate #google #linking
  • Profile picture of the author row01
    As long as your destination URL matches your display URL, google doesn't give you any trouble.
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    • Profile picture of the author yoangov
      Originally Posted by row01 View Post

      As long as your destination URL matches your display URL, google doesn't give you any trouble.
      This is NOT correct, please do not confuse people.


      Direct linking is NOT allowed in adwords. You might get your account banned really fast. Yet, some people manage to do it if they have good cloakers. I don't use any cloakers as of recently, but I know a guy who has a really good one available for rent.
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  • Profile picture of the author n3o
    seems like the reviewer got tricked
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  • Profile picture of the author LucidWebMarketing
    There is a lot of confusion, most of it seems people's opinion which is wrong most of the time. This has been going on for years and it doesn't seem it's going away any time soon as evidenced by this thread. I will however try.

    First, there is NO rule or anything else for that matter in the policies that prevents you from direct linking to an affiliate. The reason a lot of people think this is because they have done so before and their ads disapproved or have been banned. But the reason is not because of direct linking, it was because the affiliate landing page did not follow the rules. If the policies had been read and understood, the advertiser would not have direct linked and avoided the problem.

    The lesson here is two-fold: known and understand the policies and then think very carefully if the affiliate is following all of them. But be aware that if the landing page changes which make it violate a policy, you as the advertiser are still responsible. You therefore have to be sure that the landing page you cannot control, will continue adhering to those policies in the future.

    Second, row01 IS correct. To expand on that and make it clearer, the domain name shown in the ad (display URL) must be the same as the eventual landing page domain (final destination domain which could be different than the URL entered in Adwords as it may be a tracking URL).

    Having entered the domain shown in the Adwords ad by hummy, I notice it goes to a different domain. Therefore, yes, he is correct that this is not allowed. That should be an automated check so I don't know why it has not been caught. Maybe so-called cloaking methods make it appear to Google that all is fine. Google has methods for you to point this sort of thing out to them so that it can be looked into and corrected if need be.
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