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

Background​

Hi everyone, I’m Mr. Feng.
My full-time job is in the NDT (non-destructive testing) industry. It’s a very niche field, and I assume most people on BHW have probably never heard of it. I’m usually quite busy with work, so I only have limited free time. In my spare time, I like to study and experiment with digital marketing.

Goal​

I’ve always felt that Google Search Ads are one of the fastest and highest-quality ways to do a cold start.

I have a ClickDealer account with access to many high-payout e-com offers. This made me wonder, instead of building an authority site or a content site, could I run a very simple setup, just one page plus paid traffic?
In other words, can a single-page affiliate site run on Google Search Ads for the long term and actually convert, and eventually be profitable? If this model works, I think it could be scaled.

What I did​

• Since my budget is limited, I can’t test every e-com offer. I built my own simple offer scoring tool and used it to select one offer to test. It’s a kitchen-related product with a $59 payout.
• I registered a .store domain. It’s cheap, and since this is only a testing phase, I didn’t feel it was necessary to register a .com domain.
• For the landing page, I referenced the offer page provided by ClickDealer and chose a review style. Because the ClickDealer offer link includes redirects, I couldn’t send traffic directly to it. So I saved a version of the landing page, hosted it on my own server, and connected it to my .store domain.
• I targeted the United States only and ran Google Search Ads. The daily budget was $18, with a maximum CPC of $1.50. I used the product keyword as the main keyword, set to exact match, and then launched the campaign.

Results​

The good news was that the campaign passed Google’s review and went run.

The bad news was that after about one week, my campaign were stopped and I received the message:
“Your account violated the Unacceptable Business Practices policy.”


This is the final data after running for a week




I’m not sure how to evaluate this data — is it good or bad?
I don't give up, I still want to continue testing

What I plan to do next​

I feel my main goal shouldn’t be conversion rate or profitability yet. The priority should be making sure the landing page is compliant, so the ads can run consistently instead of being shut down at any time.
Based on my own research, I believe the most likely reason for the suspension was a “70% discount” claim on the landing page.


I plan to make changes and test again. Before I do that, I have a few questions. These are just my current thoughts, and I’m not sure if they’re correct:

1. My account was suspended. Can I still create a new Google Ads account under the same Google account and continue testing? How risky is that? (I only use my own email to register accounts, and I don’t know where people buy or manage proxy accounts.)
2. Do I need to change the landing page domain, or can I continue using the same domain?
3. What are the basic compliance requirements for a landing page on Google Search Ads?
4. Is it possible that my account was suspended because of exaggerated or aggressive promotional claims on the page?
5. Could it be that saving and reusing the offer’s landing page caused Google to treat my site as a mirror or duplicate site, which led to the suspension?

I’m not sure whether it’s okay to post my landing page URL here so others can help review it. I’m concerned it might be considered self-promotion.
Please tell me, where exactly is the problem, and how should I adjust it to continue testing?
I'm not ready to give up

In my experience, most brands prohibit CPC or keyword branding, so carefully review the terms regarding this. Regarding my Google Ads account being locked for circumventing the system, when I bought a second account and ran it on the old domain, it was locked for using multiple accounts.

dinhtran said:

In my experience, most brands prohibit CPC or keyword branding, so carefully review the terms regarding this. Regarding my Google Ads account being locked for circumventing the system, when I bought a second account and ran it on the old domain, it was locked for using multiple accounts.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I may not have explained it clearly. I’m not bidding on brand keywords. I’m bidding on keywords related to the product’s features or attributes.

Feel good to see our China fellows here, welcome to here bro.

Another possible reason is maybe Google ads just ban users without reasons, Goolge was cracking down adwords spams the whole year of 2025, many legit users got banned too, so maybe just try more and wish luck to yourself lol.

terrycody said:

Feel good to see our China fellows here, welcome to here bro.

Another possible reason is maybe Google ads just ban users without reasons, Goolge was cracking down adwords spams the whole year of 2025, many legit users got banned too, so maybe just try more and wish luck to yourself lol.

Click to expand...

Bro, I’m really glad to see your reply.
But what you said hit my confidence a bit. Does Google really penalize things for no clear reason?
Does that mean my test failure has no solid standard to judge against?

I am Mr feng said:

Does Google really penalize things for no clear reason?

Click to expand...

To be honest, can't 100% to comfirm this since we are not Google.

But google is notorious for its random ban without any reasons, say like Gmail account, adwords account, etc, so I guess some people will just get banned because unluck.

And google indeed ramp up the cracking on adwords in 2025, because there were too many scam accounts to utilize adwords credits before, a lot of legit adwords accounts also got banned without a value reason, so I'd bet you caught that too.

Consider our nature, you should take a look at the payment method, account login IP, or whatever related with these things, but again, Google ban legit users, so what you need to do it just try more accounts, more diversity, and see which account will survive.

Btw, I don't know adwords, if I am right, there are some accounts have bonus credits, like you spend $100 and it gives you $300-$500 credits, you can search it in marketplace, and talk with those sellers to get some advices maybe.

And again, still can't make sure whether its your setup problems or not.

I mean, like, does adwords hate the one page website? No idea, maybe.

Does adwords allow direct affiliate link to product? No idea. For example, you get the call to action button in your page, the button URL is go to xxxx.com/cleaner-X directly. Maybe google hates this or not I dunno.

But you can always change this URL, and set a 301 redirect, like the new button URL is yourdomain.com/best-cleaner-x, and if a vistor clicks on that button, then it redirects to xxxx.com/cleaner-X. Again, don't listen to me, its just one my thoughts.

For websites, if Google don't allow one page, just add some random pages, use GPT to generate some texts around products, its easy, its for Google, users won't care about it...

• Max CPC: $1.50
• Budget: $18/day → ~12 clicks/day
• Conversion rate: 2%–4% (for cold paid search on e-com affiliate)
• 12 clicks/day → ~360 clicks/month
• At 3% CVR:
  • ~10.8 conversions/month
  • 10.8 × $59 ≈ $637 revenue
• Your ad spend:
  • $18 × 30 = $540

~ $97 profit that is probably even smaller after fees
I like the idea, and can probably work if you really put effort into it to find a good model, especially once you manage to understand google ads better, but... I wonder how profitable that can/cant be.

terrycody said:

To be honest, can't 100% to comfirm this since we are not Google.

But google is notorious for its random ban without any reasons, say like Gmail account, adwords account, etc, so I guess some people will just get banned because unluck.

And google indeed ramp up the cracking on adwords in 2025, because there were too many scam accounts to utilize adwords credits before, a lot of legit adwords accounts also got banned without a value reason, so I'd bet you caught that too.

Consider our nature, you should take a look at the payment method, account login IP, or whatever related with these things, but again, Google ban legit users, so what you need to do it just try more accounts, more diversity, and see which account will survive.

Btw, I don't know adwords, if I am right, there are some accounts have bonus credits, like you spend $100 and it gives you $300-$500 credits, you can search it in marketplace, and talk with those sellers to get some advices maybe.

Click to expand...

Bro, I’ve run a lot of different types of Google Ads myself. I’ve been suspended many times, and each time I used the same Gmail to create new ad accounts.

I’ve also heard all kinds of theories, IP issues, the same account history carrying over, and so on. But based on my own testing, I’ve still had some campaigns run long-term without getting banned. Most of those were SaaS-type tools.
So my conclusion is this: for Google, certain sensitive products or specific sales models are simply not tolerated.
With this current test, I don’t want to change the account as a variable. Instead, I want to explore other variables and try to figure out where Google’s real boundaries are.

terrycody said:

And again, still can't make sure whether its your setup problems or not.

I mean, like, does adwords hate the one page website? No idea, maybe.

Does adwords allow direct affiliate link to product? No idea. For example, you get the call to action button in your page, the button URL is go to xxxx.com/cleaner-X directly. Maybe google hates this or not I dunno.

But you can always change this URL, and set a 301 redirect, like the new button URL is yourdomain.com/best-cleaner-x, and if a vistor clicks on that button, then it redirects to xxxx.com/cleaner-X. Again, don't listen to me, its just one my thoughts.

For websites, if Google don't allow one page, just add some random pages, use GPT to generate some texts around products, its easy, its for Google, users won't care about it...

Click to expand...

Based on what I know so far, Google definitely doesn’t like thin pages. Pages without a Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, or other required disclosures are also not acceptable. I’ve run into this before, after submitting a campaign, it was rejected right away.
Some affiliate offers use URLs that redirect. Those URLs can’t be used as the final URL in an ad and won’t pass Google’s review.

So I want to keep testing to figure out exactly which factors are mandatory and which ones matter less. I want to get this clear.

cogit said:

• Max CPC: $1.50
• Budget: $18/day → ~12 clicks/day
• Conversion rate: 2%–4% (for cold paid search on e-com affiliate)
• 12 clicks/day → ~360 clicks/month
• At 3% CVR:
  • ~10.8 conversions/month
  • 10.8 × $59 ≈ $637 revenue
• Your ad spend:
  • $18 × 30 = $540

~ $97 profit that is probably even smaller after fees
I like the idea, and can probably work if you really put effort into it to find a good model, especially once you manage to understand google ads better, but... I wonder how profitable that can/cant be.

Click to expand...

Yes, the concept makes sense. For now, I’m not even focusing on conversion rates. The most important thing is getting through Google Ads compliance review, and that’s exactly what I’m testing right now.

cogit said:

• Max CPC: $1.50
• Budget: $18/day → ~12 clicks/day
• Conversion rate: 2%–4% (for cold paid search on e-com affiliate)
• 12 clicks/day → ~360 clicks/month
• At 3% CVR:
  • ~10.8 conversions/month
  • 10.8 × $59 ≈ $637 revenue
• Your ad spend:
  • $18 × 30 = $540

~ $97 profit that is probably even smaller after fees
I like the idea, and can probably work if you really put effort into it to find a good model, especially once you manage to understand google ads better, but... I wonder how profitable that can/cant be.

Click to expand...

Hi, the offer you are running in Google ads is whit hat offer right?, would you like to tell exact offer you are running in Google ads

srinidhi6 said:

Hi, the offer you are running in Google ads is whit hat offer right?, would you like to tell exact offer you are running in Google ads

Click to expand...

An ecom offer from clickdealer. A kitchen supply.

While building the landing page for my second experiment, I ran into a question:
Can the CTA on a landing page link directly to an affiliate link?
Since the landing page domain and the affiliate link domain are obviously different, is it acceptable to send users straight to the affiliate URL?
Or is it better to use an intermediate HTML redirect page under my own domain first?

I’m also wondering whether using a redirect page would actually increase the risk of triggering Google Ads policy issues, rather than reduce it.

I am Mr feng said:

While building the landing page for my second experiment, I ran into a question:
Can the CTA on a landing page link directly to an affiliate link?
Since the landing page domain and the affiliate link domain are obviously different, is it acceptable to send users straight to the affiliate URL?
Or is it better to use an intermediate HTML redirect page under my own domain first?

I’m also wondering whether using a redirect page would actually increase the risk of triggering Google Ads policy issues, rather than reduce it.

Click to expand...

No one replied, so I went ahead and set up an intermediate redirect page myself, with a 2-second delay.
The ads are now live and have passed Google Ads review.



I’m really happy about this. It validates my understanding of what a Google Ads–compliant landing page needs to include — at least for now, it seems I was right.


This is my second test: a new account, a new domain, and a new landing page.
My only goal at this stage is to keep the campaign running for at least 14 days.
I’ll start thinking about conversion rates after that.
For now, I’m just observing.

Round 2 is officially live. The campaign was approved yesterday and has been running for a full day now. So far, so good, no red flags yet.​

For this second attempt, I’ve intentionally crippled the campaign's reach. I’m not chasing conversions or ROI right now; my only goal is to keep the account alive and see if it can survive the "14-day danger zone."

Budget: $5/day.

Bidding: Max CPC capped at $1.00.

Targeting: Narrowed down the location significantly to keep spend minimal. I doubt it’ll even hit the full $5 daily limit, which is exactly what I want.



I’m playing the long game here. Let’s see if this "stealth mode" approach can get me past the 2-week mark without a ban.

Update: Day 1 of 14 (The Survival Test)​

Got 15 impressions on Day 1, which proves my bidding strategy is actually working.

Day 2 of 14​

So far so good, campaign is live, the account survived, and I’m seeing clicks.

Good luck mate... used to "try" to run affiliate campaign in a similar fashion, and was told to create a bridging page instead of directly sending them to offer page... i felt it's gonna cause many drop-offs in first landing page and dropped the idea to proceed. But Google has changed lots of rules since then, hope to see you find some success !

ferronf said:

Good luck mate... used to "try" to run affiliate campaign in a similar fashion, and was told to create a bridging page instead of directly sending them to offer page... i felt it's gonna cause many drop-offs in first landing page and dropped the idea to proceed. But Google has changed lots of rules since then, hope to see you find some success !

Click to expand...

Thanks for the support, bro.
Yes, you are talking about adding a sales funnel, and that definitely needs testing.
Sending traffic directly to the product page or sending it to an email capture page can lead to very different results.
The final outcome depends heavily on the copy and the funnel path design.

For this experiment though, my priority is keeping the Google Ads account alive.
I want to clearly understand which factors actually affect ad compliance.
One step at a time.

Day 3 of 14​

Everything is looking solid. Click is increasing and has already exceeded my $5 daily budget.