I keep getting told that you can only advertise on Google if your selling a direct product however I know many people that have ads leading to a landing page for CPA's as well as affiliates, so is it against Googles TOS to have an ad leading to these? Can someone give me some good clarification as to what Im allowed to have my ad direct to?

google is seriously cracking down on affiliates LPs whose sole purpose is to click through as an affiliate.

Your LP needs to provide some sort of value other than "funneling" the user to the affiliate source.

I see, what if I were to have a blog without any affiliate links or anything, deep in content with a Pop up CPA. The blog would be related to the CPA ex: a blog about Macbooks and reviews and then have a Win a Free Macbook CPA Popup?

I read Google frowns upon any Popups or over adverstising but I don't think that would be slap worthy would it? Especially if the blog is providing some good content and reviews. Also the ad would be targetted towards "Win a free Macbook" not.. macbook reviews.

Well, I've direct linked to a CPA landing page in an ad and Google approved it. However, that's pretty useless because without the tracking link (with the exception of a few advertisers), my conversions won't track.

What I do is build a nice, informative, user-friendly landing page with no external links to make Google happy. If Google visits my site, they see the landing page. Everyone else who visits goes straight to the CPA offer.

=D

Originally Posted by artizhay

Well, I've direct linked to a CPA landing page in an ad and Google approved it. However, that's pretty useless because without the tracking link (with the exception of a few advertisers), my conversions won't track.

What I do is build a nice, informative, user-friendly landing page with no external links to make Google happy. If Google visits my site, they see the landing page. Everyone else who visits goes straight to the CPA offer.

=D

how do you get only google to see the landing page and have everyone else go straight to the CPA offer?

Originally Posted by kennyall

how do you get only google to see the landing page and have everyone else go straight to the CPA offer?

It's a PHP script that gets some info about the user then responds accordingly. There are two ways to do it:

1. Browser user-agent.
When you use a browser, it has a special code that identifies which browser it is. Google's auto-verify bot for AdWords has the word "AdBot" (I believe, could be something different; I don't remember) in the user-agent, so you can detect this with PHP and display the landing page for the bot. This only works for the AdWords bot. If an employee visits your page manually, they will go to the CPA offer.

2. Referring URL
Perhaps better because you can deter both Google employees and the bot. When you visit a site, some data is sent along, including where you came from. When you click on a Google ad, then URL you click is "www.google.com/aclk" followed by a long string of characters. So if your user comes from that link, you can redirect them to the CPA offer because you know they legitimately clicked your ad. Otherwise, the user will see your landing page, i.e. if an employee goes straight to your site or the bot visits your site.

Awesome info thanks man. If I were to own my own online store/e-commerce site would I have to go through all that trouble with the scripts or is it fine for me to simply direct link to my store?

Originally Posted by kennyall

Awesome info thanks man. If I were to own my own online store/e-commerce site would I have to go through all that trouble with the scripts or is it fine for me to simply direct link to my store?

You can direct link.

Gotcha, one more question... could you recommend a cloaking plugin for wordpress? Those work just as well as manually installing a go.php script correct?

Im looking at something like pretty link but want to choose the best one I can.

Originally Posted by artizhay

It's a PHP script that gets some info about the user then responds accordingly. There are two ways to do it:

1. Browser user-agent.
When you use a browser, it has a special code that identifies which browser it is. Google's auto-verify bot for AdWords has the word "AdBot" (I believe, could be something different; I don't remember) in the user-agent, so you can detect this with PHP and display the landing page for the bot. This only works for the AdWords bot. If an employee visits your page manually, they will go to the CPA offer.

2. Referring URL
Perhaps better because you can deter both Google employees and the bot. When you visit a site, some data is sent along, including where you came from. When you click on a Google ad, then URL you click is "www.google.com/aclk" followed by a long string of characters. So if your user comes from that link, you can redirect them to the CPA offer because you know they legitimately clicked your ad. Otherwise, the user will see your landing page, i.e. if an employee goes straight to your site or the bot visits your site.

I like the second version. I personally am always going to make landing pages, but great thinking. Repped.