Forums

[Lawyer Marketer Contribution Level: 2]

Ok,

This stream of posts has been bugging the hell out of me...whether or not you can use masked and/or forwarded domains with Google Adwords.
I think I have figured out what has caused the confusion. The thing that was bothering me most is that I use masking and forwarding for my main biz, and for my affiliate links on Adwords. The posts above warning against it had me go back and research on google and in Mike Dillard's PPC Domination, for which I forward my URL: http://www.DominatePPCnow.com to the affiliate website on PPC Domination. Cool name, huh? I knew I had heard this issue addressed in Mike's course. It's actually in the very first video with Jim Yaghi.

The issue is whether the affiliate system is "cookie-based" or not. If your affiliate system is a "cookie-based" system, that places a cookie on the user's computer, you will have problems with Adwords, if you forward. And you will most likely lose leads and commissions.

But, if you have a unique URL through your affiliate system, like http://www.myname.mybiz.com that is hosted by your affiliate business you won't have any problems with Adwords. At least that is my experience, and it is confirmed by all of the sources that I have read. In fact, Jim Yaghi says, "if you want to advertise a replicated system page with your own domain name, the only way to do it, is if you mask your URL".

If you search "affiliate programs" on Google, and click through about 4 or 5 sponsored pages, you WILL see some people advertising URLs that are unmasked. In other words, Google will let you do it, but DON'T.

Would you click an ad that has a website called: www. greatnewbiz .com/MyFullname432?23894ix?

Whew, I think I'm done.
Sean
"Do the work today, to achieve your dreams tomorrow"

[Stephen Bent Contribution Level: 2]

Excellent posts here, I have wondered about this too. I had signed up for a few capture pages in the past and dropped them because I didn't "own them" I looks like you must have your own page to get indexed and listed correctly. I still have the company approved pages, and they have their purpose, but they have only limited use. There are plenty of home made capture pages here for ideas, so thats where I'm at..... building a personal page now.

[Al Caputo Contribution Level: 1]

This is not re. the more complicated issues of masking, etc. - but I thought I'd add my recent experience of directly promoting my Magnetic Sponsoring links on Adwords.
At first I listed my display URL as simply 'www.MagnecticSponsoring.com' and my destination URL as my personal, long, linking address for the m.s. capture page. This was rejected as "URL's not matching."
What I changed to make it work was adding into my display URL the word 'online' that appears just prior to the '.com' in the destination URL. So the 'phrase that includes the .com' of the destination link was replicated/uninterrupted. This, then was accepted.

hope that helps a few of you,
Al

[Lawyer Marketer Contribution Level: 2]

Al,
I think you are mixing up the process of masking with the option of "display url" and "destination url" in your adwords ad itself. Those have to match - I tried this shortcut before and got the email from google as well. Basically, Google prevents you from displaying somone else's url in your ad for obvious reasons. I display my url with Capital letters at the beginning of each word so it is easier to read (i.e http://DominatePPCnow.com ) But it's easy to understand why they wont let you display a url that you dont own.

To understand forwarding better, Go back up and read my earlier post. Forwarding and masking are done on your domain account settings on godaddy, or whatever company you have your urls with.

Sean

[Michael Taylor Contribution Level: 1]

Great Discussion,

I am reading Perry Marshall's eBook at this time and it is a goldmine.

I felt the issue was mainly with Google Adwords. I used Adwords a couple of years ago, and do not believe there was a problem at that time with masking affiliate sites, but that is not longer the story.

My next step is building a gateway page. Hey, knowing is half the battle.

Thanks for the clarification guys,

[Lawyer Marketer Contribution Level: 2]

Kurt,
You're talking about a "redirect", and your right on.

[David Green Contribution Level: 1]

Jeremy's earlier post is correct on both forwarding and masking issues:

1) Using a forwarded domain name will get your AdWords ad disabled - e.g., the URL that you provide for the ad reads "www.mybizdomain.com" but when a visitor clicks on it, they get redirected to "www.bignmcompany.com/mybiz" (and that's what appears as the URL when they go to that page). Been there, tried that, the AdWords ad does NOT get approved by Google due to the forwarding.

2) Masking the domain name will work as far as Google AdWords goes - no one (including Google) ever sees anything except your masked domain name. But therein lies the problem: no matter what the visitor clicks on, the URL never changes from "www.mybizdomain.com" (or whatever you're using); a page filename NEVER shows up when using a masked domain name! Therefore, you cannot do any goal tracking, page tracking, etc. except if a link takes the visitor to a DIFFERENT domain name.

So if you really want to control AND track the visits and conversions from AdWords, build your own site and point your own domain name to it. You can then provide links to your distributor site URL("www.bignmcompany.com/mybiz" ) if you need to for actual product purchases (as some company's require) - and still track the traffic.

Cheers,

David G. (new kid on the block)

[Simon Hedley Contribution Level: 1]

ok.. quick tips.

1) create mini sites.. for the main one.. and optimise it for the keyphrase
2) have the google ad go to that optimised page.
3) have that be a competlling offer.. and do an email capture.. then redirect to main money site.

ok.. that will be £10k please.


S

[Pierre Levasseur Contribution Level: 1]

The rule in Adwords is that the domain in your display URL must be the same as the domain the click eventually ends up.

So, if you have a display URL in your ad of

www.acompanyname.com/something

the landing page domain name as seen in your browser must be

www.acompanyname.com

You can't get around it with masking or any other tricks. If you try and persist, as others have said, you may get your whole account banished.