The last 3 people that have told me they can’t ever get good Adwords Quality Scores were all direct linking to the affiliate offers they were promoting. They all said their quality score was fine for a couple days (good ctr and stuff) then boom… I suggested they use a jump page and when they did they were able maintain their good quality score.
Here is the thing… do you guys know that most affiliate companies auto geotarget for you? Do you also know that most of the humans at Google that check Adwords ads are not in the USA? In fact most are in India (from what people inside Adwords have told me).
So use your own jump pages when possible and when not possible do your own geotargeting to show non us users a jump page but us users the jump page.
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Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2414 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 78 comments… read them below or add one }
I wouldn’t be surprised that GG has automated tools that sniff affiliate links too and apply a low quality score immediately.
Yeh, but initially you can get going for few days until they manually review the ad
they manually do review it and in fact flag your account when you are using affiliate links so that the quality score sucks for every other campaign you run… no manual checking needed.
Google keeps surprising us , but let’s look at it this way , it’s all for a better user experience
A jump page can help your quality score A LOT. Great tips shoe. You’d be surprised at how much cheaper your bids can be if you use an optimized jump page.
Ditto on that. I learned it the hard way by losing quite a bit of money by not making a good jump page.
Any recommendations on tutorials for creating an effective jump page?
I second that request!
I third it
Fourth’d
I believe landing pages are almost necessary for AdWords now.
Same goes for facebook and pretty much all PPC I think… Putting up landing pages almost always has benefits.
This would make a great video “how to” for newbs like me, I don’t yet get “jump page”. How about it Shoe?
a page that redirects i think…
let me give you a simple example. Let’s say that Shoe want to link to AzoogleAds. Instead of linking directly to AzoogleAds, in which case the link will be this one: azoogleads.com/?ref=shoemoney, he links to shoemoney.com/azoogleads.php, which redirects you almost instantly to azoogleads.com/?ref=shoemoney. The end result is the same but there are lots of benefits by using jump pages.
So when the article reads “jump page”, what it’s essentially saying is “301 redirect”?
Nice inside scoop.
I think that I’ll never use adwords and adsense in my website. It’s useless in my case I presume ^^”
I disagree, Adsense can be ONE way to monetize your website, I wouldn’t call it useless…
I’ve found them quite helpful too. I’m still a newbie at all this, but hey, even a newbie knows that something isn’t going right when he’s losing quite a bit of money!
I didn’t know that fact about who clicks. Is there any published information that demonstrates the breakdown of clickers in averages?
Shoe,
Could you clarify this: “So use your own jump pages when possible and when not possible do your own geotargeting to show non us users a jump page but us users the jump page.”
Are you saying to use one jump page for non-US visitors and another for US?
yes just a single page on your domain that redirects based on your own targeting.
Do you have any examples of wordpress plugins to make this (jump page creation and geotargeting) easier?
Google a plugin called Wordpress Redirection. Works great.
I thought that was the whole point – create a landing page for adwords and hope they click on your targeted ads. Guess I’m learning something new as to linking affiliate links directly to paid adwords. Cool.
oh never knew that there are many indians who are part of G
“indians” are a part of pretty much every outsourced tech company lol
You will still get busted for this. It’s against googles adwords guidelines. Google’s guidelines for a good quality score suggest
1) Your site provides relevant unique information.
2) You clearly defined the section containing the adverts as an advert section.
More here
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=mr&answer=46675
I would also suggest that you instead create two campaigns and target one for US only traffic, and one for other traffic, with two separate landing pages/ad copys for each campaign.
well im telling you what works and how it works… not quoting TOS’s
I think he forgot where he was
Sorry – is a jump page the same as a landing page?
Jump page – no content just a redirect to where your going.
A jump page can be a landing page… its just a page in between the ad and the end offer
I also had the same problem and results are good after landing page..
hmm… geo targeting is based on the users IP, is it not? Anyone with slight knowledge of proxies can get around geo targeting / redirecting, whether it’s a web proxy or a proxy server…
This has been a challenge for me, as I am in Canada and most offers are US only. Not sure if my location has anything to do with using a US geotargeted campaign for a US site.
Landing pages is the way to go.
Very good information, and while it does violate Google’s terms of service, they don’t spend all day checking to see who is violating them. If they did, they wouldn’t have time to do anything else.
Besides, I only think they even have a terms of service to cover their own a$$.
Jeremy’s right though, it is what works.
this is my first time hearing this term…jump page….sounds like an intro page rather than going straight into the content…
is this the same as those website that have flash intro? but rather than flash, you optimize using normal html?
A google rep told me literally they are picking out everyone using affiliate links and that in the end they only want the ‘real’ companies doing adwords… in the EU tradedoubler is already facing heavy probs due to this, the quality scores for their affiliates is disastrous even with jump pages.
Shoemoney, I love you and your blog to death, but I don’t think this is very good advice. It may work for you, but everyone isn’t a Shoemoney.
People need to realize that you *are* putting your campaigns, and possibly your AdWords account at risk if you do this. If I had a nickel for every ‘thin’ affiliate I’ve heard from in the last 12-18 mos who got slapped or lost their account – well, I wouldn’t be Shoemoney rich, but I’d sure have a whole lotta nickels. I get tons of requests to try to resurrect these types of accounts, and I have to turn them away, because it takes more of my time and effort than I have to give (even at a hefty consulting rate). Sure, lots of people get away with it; Google hasn’t had the time or the staff to police everyone, but they’re taking more time and hiring more staff. And it’s getting harder and harder to sustain this business model. And in fact, that’s what Google tells you when they cut you off – that you no longer fit their business model.
As long as you’re still okay if you don’t have AdWords to rely on, go for it. But if losing your AdWords account will put a major hurt on you – I’d not advise it.
agreed… but if you read the post its referring to people that are already getting nuked and giving them something to test
Right. I did read it; I just think it’s important to list the risks along with the rewards.
So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong, spending all this time developing landing pages and I could just throw together a jump page with a redirect. Although I still think a landing page is appropriate in a lot of situations (but they’re a pain to put together sometimes).
no… actually landing pages are a jump page…
I know that Google could fix this if they wanted to, however I can understand the business side of it as far as making a ton off of people who are unaware to this fact.
Google adwords piss me off. They cheat you so bad!
I would also recommend this to anyone who is doing any marketing on Facebook. Cloak your URLs and use landing pages!
Some info here: http://www.smmguru.com/2008/09/02/make-money-with-facebook-ads-part-4
Hello Shoe,
I haven’t done a lot of work in affiliate marketing, but I see the common theme in these comments is the confusion over jump pages and their best use.
Why don’t you write another post about them? (I already searched your site and couldn’t seem to find any.)
ya, i’ve been getting slapped too.
Thanks for the great tip Shoe! I just found out that one of my campaigns got slapped yesterday so it is back to the drawing board.
This is an interesting way to look at things and use ideas!
Good advice for maintaining quality scores.
Good tip to remember. Thanks Shoe.
Always remember not to be narrow minded on the Internet.
There is more to the world than just the US!
Possible because in India there is cheap labor so employee from india might be checking and do all the works.
You are mistaken my friend.
Google pays the same wages for all its employees.
i think geo-targeting is sooo undervalued. a great tool to hide things from people who shouldn’t be looking at them
I guess I have to research how to geotarget now.
Actually a good tip, stupid outsourcing though. Even though their somehow better at approving ads then the kids from Harvard who approve ads over at facebook.
I think that’s a good bit of advice for folks to try, especially if they’re new to the game. There may be risks as others have mentioned, but that caveat applies to many money-making strategies on the web. If nothing else it’s a good post to give folks some idea why their quality plummeted.
great tip! thanks!
ofcourse google is going to lower your quality score. you are not providing any additional value to the equation.
Thanks useful info for me for the future.
Newbie at this, need more info.
Are you using a “jump” page as a meta refresh? Or is it an actual page that is an index.php page?
I guess this is a good tips, but I don’t want to get slaped and loose my adwords account..
hmmmm, interesting thoughts….i didn’t have that kinda of problems, but I’ll surely look for some info now…
hmmm… i know i get all the adwords responses from my own country…India!
google adwords is the best.
I have a jump page but not using it on my PPC campaigns. I am using the direct links which do work for a period on Adwords like you said. Replacing them with my jump page now. Thanx.
Funny that you mentioned this because I was just testing it.
That really sucks.
i agree jump pages works the best when it comes to google adwords
I developed a landing page (jump page) that summarizes and highlights the product I am going to eventually refer link to and give them the best information I can (relative to my keyword selections) and then I let them click to continue.
It gives me a landing page without the mirror, redirect, and duplicate penalties and I don’t have to worry about my score diving and I’m in compliance. Its a little more work, but hey, even ShoeMoney knows that its work that gets you the money to put in your Shoe, not get rich quick!
I have samples of that throughout my site.
Nice logic. That’s probably why google keeps hiring more and more people in India anyways.
Great advice!
I never knew this could happen