Google's policy against so-called affiliate bridge pages states that you can’t have a page that is there for the sole purpose of taking people from a PPC ad to someone else’s product. Let us clarify for you.
Some time ago we had several running PPC campaigns in Google AdWords. After working on them for several weeks, an appreciable amount of keywords had achieved quality scores of 7 to 10 with maximum cost per click of between 0.11 and 0.35 cents. For each campaign, a landing site had been built. Each site had 5 to 10 pages with simple information about the products and some comparisons. A couple of sites containing videos of the products. Each campaign was getting 30 to 60 clicks per day generating 1-4 daily sales. The products were mostly Amazon. The campaigns looked promising, the products were young and we were trying to manage them carefully for growing.
Suddenly, one morning, the quality scores of all of them fell down to 1 and stopped showing ads. No notice. No warning. We checked our AdWords statement and everything seemed in order. Why had this happened?
After several unsuccessful attempts to reactive the campaign by adding keywords and changing the landing sites, we sent a question to AdWords support. Four days later we received a reply:
“Dear AdWords Advertiser,
Thank you for writing to us about your ad's visibility. We recommend that you use the Adwords' Ads Diagnostic Tool in your account to get an immediate answer to your question.
Once you've checked the Ads Diagnostic Tool, review the following list to learn more about common issues that affect ad visibility.
1. I just created or changed my ad.
2. My account has a message about a declined payment.
3. I just created or changed my location targeting settings.”
(The list continued with explanations about each one)
We checked each suggestion. Nothing changed in the campaigns. We emailed support again. The same answer three days later. In our third email attempt we received a different answer; it’s a little long, but this information could be useful for your own campaigns:
“Thank you for your email and sorry for your difficulty. I reviewed your campaigns, and saw that the reason why you are getting poor quality score here is that the landing page quality of the websites advertised here is 'Poor', as you can see in the Ad diagnostic tool. As per our recent analysis, it is a bridge page. Let me explain to you what we mean by a bridge page and how you can resolve this issue.
Google allows affiliates to advertise with AdWords. However, to provide the best possible experience for our users and advertisers, Google does not permit ads for bridge pages that are solely intended to direct the user to the parent company's website. We've found that pages with multiple ads leading to the same site provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for our users.
As noted in our advertising Terms and Conditions, Google may refuse any ads or close down any of your ad campaigns at any time, for any reason. To comply with our policies, please choose one of the options below:
Option 1: Refine your web page so that it provides a unique user experience and has an overall unique look and feel. We find that sites have a unique user experience when one of the following is true:
- The landing page for each ad offers different products or services (for example, a large manufacturer with two product sites, one solely for stereos and one solely for computers, both running on the keyword 'electronics')
- The landing page for each ad serves a different purpose (for example, one site focuses on product information only and the other site focuses on product sale only).
- Any product overlaps on the landing pages are not significant enough to affect user experience.
- The pricing difference offered by each site is significant and based on the same criteria (for example, if one site includes pricing with tax, the other site must include pricing with tax).
Option 2: Redesign your web page to offer multiple, competing offers from different companies for related services. For example, a web page promoting a specific book could have links to four online bookshops from which one could purchase the book.
Option 3: Link directly to the parent company site, using the appropriate Display URL. You may wish to contact your affiliate parent company directly to ensure that any changes to your page are in line with your affiliate agreement.
We'd be happy to review any proposed changes to your web sites, and we appreciate your efforts to comply with our policies. However, we cannot offer you detailed or specific advice on your website. We encourage you to work to improve the quality of your site and the experiences you provide users who may visit.
If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center, where you'll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team”
After changing the sites, a pair of campaigns became active and the others don’t. So we asked for a review. We received this answer:
“Thank you for your patience. I'm sorry to say that our specialists don't find your landing page competitive enough to be given a high score as of now. You will have to optimize it further to make it more competitive and to ensure that it is not a bridge page.
If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center where you'll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team”
At the end of all this, three campaigns were reactivated. A major rebuilt was needed for these sites to avoid the "bridge page" issue. You can still use direct linking to vendor sites (for good products) and landing sites with price comparisons, for example, pointing to diferent vendors with affiliate programs.
