[Journey] Testing a Single-Page Affiliate Site on Google Search Ads (Failed First Attempt)

[I am Mr feng]

What are the basic compliance requirements for a landing page on Google Search Ads?

I’m still running the experiment, so I’m not comfortable drawing early conclusions about what factors affect compliance. Once the 14 day test is finished, I can reply and share what I believe are the baseline compliance factors.
I’ll also publish a full summary article on my blog.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 4 of 14​

I set a daily budget of 5 dollars, but today it spent much more than that. The campaign is still running normally and the account hasn’t been suspended.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 5 of 14​

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 6 of 14​

The campaign has been running for 6 days now, and so far everything looks normal. I feel that my understanding of ad compliance is correct. I’ll still let the experiment run for the full 14 days. At this point, I haven’t changed any settings at all.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 7 of 14​

The ads have been running for 7 days now. These are the results from the first 7 days. I haven’t changed any settings at all. Based on this, I feel like my understanding of compliance is most likely correct. I’m going to continue with the 14 day test. One more week to go.

After the experiment is finished, I will put together everything I have verified about Google Ads compliance for running affiliate offers and publish it in a blog post.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 8 of 14​

The ad campaign has been live for over a week now, and everything is running smoothly with no issues so far.
The spend has just exceeded $30, and the CPC has increased slightly. I’m not making any changes to the settings and will continue the 14 day survival test.

 

[NightHarbor]

don't give up man wish you a good luck

 

[I am Mr feng]

don't give up man wish you a good luck

Thanks, bro. I’m definitely going to stick with the testing.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 9 of 14​

Account Still Running,
The testing process is a bit boring, and I really want to start optimizing the ads. But I’ll wait until the full 14 days are completed.

 

[CarefulWord]

good luck with it hope you will be successful with it

 

[I am Mr feng]

good luck with it hope you will be successful with it

Tks, bro. I really appreciate the support.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 10 of 14​

It’s day 10 now, and I don’t think ad policy violations are going to be an issue anymore. What I’m more concerned about is whether this offer can actually convert. With cold traffic from Google Ads, I’m starting to worry that my current landing page might not be strong enough to drive conversions. That’s probably the next thing I need to focus on.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 11 of 14
The CTR is 11%, which is actually pretty good. But the CTR on my landing page is not good. I’m pretty sure my landing page doesn’t align well with the search intent. That said, the main goal of this experiment was to test the compliance of the landing page, and in that regard, it was a success.

 

[starcraft89]

dont stick to just one offer, test out a few offers at the same time.
You can rotate the offer

 

[I am Mr feng]

day 12 of 14

 

[I am Mr feng]

dont stick to just one offer, test out a few offers at the same time.
You can rotate the offer

Yes, but I'm currently testing advertising compliance, so I've only selected one offer for testing now. Once this experiment is complete, I'll use your method.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 13 of 14

 

[I am Mr feng]

really good journey wish you good luck and patience

Tks.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Day 14 of 14






The total data for the 14 days: I spent $60.22 in total. The average cost per click was $0.93.


For this offer, I only promoted it through this Google Ads campaign. In the ClickDealer dashboard, I can see there were 14 clicks. Out of those, 5 were my own test clicks. So that means only 9 real clicks went from my landing page to the offer page.
My ad campaign had 65 clicks in total. That makes the click through rate from the landing page to the offer about 13 percent. That seems decent. But there were still no conversions.


The 14 day account survival test has ended. The account was not suspended, and the campaign is still running.
This confirms that after my first ad account was suspended, my assumptions about compliant landing pages and ad settings were correct.

Over the past two days, I summarized the design of the landing page from my second campaign and the ad settings I followed based on my compliance assumptions. I’ve written everything up in a blog post. If you’re interested, you can check out.
https://www.iammrfeng.com/google-ads-affiliate-landing-page-approved/

Here are the 10 main points I’ve summarized:

1. Do not promote products that are prohibited by Google. This is 100 percent certain and non negotiable.
2. The account must not be a blacklisted account.
3. The landing page cannot be a bridge page. The content cannot be thin.
4. The copy on the page should not use absolute claims or guaranteed results.
5. The landing page must include transparent disclosures and contact information. It is better not to use a Gmail or other free email address.
6. It is better to use an intermediate page on the same domain for the CTA link before sending users to the offer.
7. The landing page must load fast and display properly on mobile devices.
8. The final URL in Google Ads should not automatically redirect. Do not use third party tracker links.
9. Do not set the budget too high at the beginning.
10. Avoid making frequent changes to the campaign settings in the early stage. It is better not to adjust too much at the start.

This survival test for the campaign was a success. At least now I clearly understand what I need to pay attention to when creating a landing page and setting up ads if I want to run affiliate offers on Google Ads. I’ve solved the compliance barrier. The next step is figuring out how to find the right offers and improve conversion rates.

 

[I am Mr feng]

Great to see your second test is live and you've made it past the initial review, Mr. Feng. Using an intermediate redirect page was a good call, as it can help mitigate potential issues with Google Ads policies. I'm curious, have you considered tracking the performance of your redirect page to see if the 2-second delay is impacting user behavior or conversion rates in any way? Additionally, what kind of landing page content are you using for this test, and are you planning to scale up your budget or targeting once you've cleared the 14-day mark?

Bro, thanks for the support.


I just finished testing the compliance side of my Google Search campaign. For that specific goal, I would say it was a success. At least my landing page and ad campaign were not suspended and ran smoothly for the full 14 days. That gives me a compliant foundation for testing more offers later.

To be honest, I have not really thought about how that 2 second delay might affect user behavior and campaign performance. That will probably be something I look into in iteration three of my experiment.

Recently I have been thinking about whether I should continue testing this current offer and landing page. During the experiment, I realized that with cold traffic from Google Ads, it is very hard to get this offer to convert. If conversions are too hard to get, then I will not have enough feedback, and that makes it difficult to judge the impact of different campaign variables.

I actually want to publish my landing page URL and make all the data transparent. But I am worried about interference that could affect the test results. If I decide to switch offers, then I will publish this landing page.

Let me think it through.