Top Level Domains – Adwords Url Policy Changes
Posted by: Ruck under Affiliates
According to the Adwords Blog, effective February 24th Google has implemented a a change to their Adwords Policy. Basically for some of us, I mean you blackhatters, you are going to have a much tougher time skewing the system with multiple display url domains in each ad group. If you dont know what this means, then dont worry about it because most do and we wont go into the many ways we have screwed, improvised the system.
Google says:
In an effort to provide more relevant results and a high quality experience for our users, we’ve made the decision to disallow multiple display URL domains within a single ad group. Going forward, all display URLs within an ad group must have 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 ad groups.
This is horse-shit, not what they really mean. Basically tools and methods have evolved into really skewing the system that has allowed PPC Marketers on Adwords to have multiple display urls in each of their adgroups. I guess they are sick of it.
Just as an example of what is allowed and what is not allowed anymore:
For example, an ad group containing the following group of display URLs would comply with this policy because all URLs contain the same top-level domain, “example.com”:
- www.example.com
- www.widgets.example.com
- www.example.com/widgets/redwidgets/
- www.example.com/index.html
On the other hand, and ad group containing the following group of display URLs would not comply with our policy because their top-level domains don’t match:
- www.example.com
- www.example.widgets.com
Sorry blackhats, it was nice while it lasted. For you whitehats with legitimate cases now (is this possible?), you will now have to make seperate adgroups for each domain. C’mon it provides a better user experience anyway right?

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Damn it, I’m not happy about this but will certainly persevere.