This has been out in the news for a while, but on Monday I received an email from our Google rep confirming that ads with different display URLs within a single ad group are going to be disapproved.
Here is the email from my rep:
“In an effort to provide more relevant results and a higher quality experience for our users, we have made the decision to no longer allow multiple domains within a single ad group. Starting in mid-February, all display URLs within an ad group must be for the same top-level domain. Please note that this amendment to our policy applies to all advertisers, regardless of previous exceptions or acceptability of any campaigns. While we understand there are legitimate use-cases for multiple domains within one ad group, we ask that separate ad groups be created for any given domain.
In order for your ad(s) to be approved, please edit your display URLs within your ad group(s) so that the top-level domains are consistent. For instructions on editing your display URL, please see https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6272&hl=en_US.”
I don’t have a problem with this policy – I’m sure it’s intended to stop unscrupulous advertisers from gaming the system. I’m just honestly not sure which of my ad groups have different display URLs! This is not a common practice for me, and now I have to comb through my client accounts to figure out which ones I have to edit….
The article was very informative and I hope that I will get such good article in future also. I often read your articles and will also read in future. But what do you think about automated seo?
Hi Bijendra, thanks for reading. I don’t think there’s any such thing as automated SEO. While some SEO tasks (and PPC tasks, for that matter) can be automated, a human needs to be monitoring and optimizing continually.