Google Slap:
A term coined by
shocked AdWords advertisers mid 2006 to describe a change
in Google
AdWords policy
introducing a quality score for the landing
pages of AdWords
ads.
Most AdWords
advertisers design their campaigns to lead visitors directly to
a very simple one-page sales
letter. If the advertiser
promotes another’s product as an affiliate
the landing sales page is not even his own but there
might be several other affiliates promoting the same
page.
Google’ quality score
criteria assign low ratings to such landing pages and as a
consequence raise the minimum keyword
bids for such ads
– in some cases dramatically. There were many advertisers
who were put out of business over night by being confronted
with a sudden bid raise from several cents to several dollars
and the realization that there was no way to continue a
profitable campaign this way.
Other quality score
criteria are:
-
Whether the
landing page is part of a full website
which minimally has to include a Contact-, an
About Us- and a Privacy Policy-page.
-
Whether there is a
complete navigation menu internally linking to each
page of the website.
-
Whether there
is a site
map
-
Most
important, whether the content
of the page has a high relevancy to the campaign
keyword (e.g. if the advertiser bids on the keyword
“car insurance” and the landing page is about general
insurance this might already be enough reason for
Google to require a minimum bid of several
dollars)
[Slap
is of imitative origin
imitating the sound of a slap (in the
face)]
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Recommended Resources
:
-
Here
you find the complete
list of Google’s criteria for high
quality landing
pages
-
The
Ultimate Guide to Google
AdWords
written by Perry Marshall,
generally known as
the
AdWords expert (you can watch a
2 hrs marketing lecture by
him
here
).
-
AdWords180
, a very recommended ebook with
information on how to deal with the
infamous Google Slap and how to
structure campaigns to achieve
CPCs of 1ct
($0.01!)
-
Affiliate
Radar
is a membership site for
PPC advertisers which provides almost
everything needed to setup and run a
profitable campaign, especially the all
important tracking of individual
keywords. This feature allows for
identifying the profitable keywords and
deleting the unprofitable from the
campaign.
-
The
Landing Page
System
. Similar but less features
than Affiliate Radar. The 2 main
differences: 1) it is not a membership
but a script hosted on a server.
Therefore only a one time expense. 2)
It allows dynamic keyword insertion on
the landing page according to the
user’s search phrase. This is a real
conversion booster.
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