Ad Spam. Bad Spam.
In February, Google’s AdWords team made an update to one of their policies. Simply put, starting April 1, all display URLs in Google ads must match the landing page. So, advertising “12345.com”, and linking to “abcde.com” is a no-no. This is a definite problem for legitimate companies that have “vanity URLs”.
However, for anyone that opposes this new Google rule, here’s why (and it’s an example I found after April 1, so there’s apparently a delay in implementing this rule).
On one of my favourite sites, www.icanhascheezburger.com, I found a Google text ad (pictured below):
The first text ad has a “Funny Cat Photos” headline, and the display URL is clearly “GroovyCatsNDogs.com” (pictured below):
Click on that link, however and you land on a squatter site atozonlineguide.com.
This site has nothing of value. It only has paid links, or links to paid links. So, clearly, the folks (or folk) behind atozonlineguide are buying inbound traffic only to make people click on the links on the site. Obviously, the inbound traffic is cheaper than the outbound traffic, and they make money on the margin.
This is clearly wrong. Web Spam at best, and downright fraud at worst. When atozonlineguide uses groovycatsndogs.com as the display url, and then takes the traffic to someplace else, this is traffic theft. Boo, hissss. Bad bad bad. Stop that. It’s just wrong.
