Google AdWords bans squeeze pages!

As I’ve talked about a lot, I’ve been testing non-stop the past few months to optimize my opt-in pages for maximum performance, and I’ve achieved insane opt-in rates as a result.

That was all well and good until yesterday afternoon, when I logged into my AdWords account for a routine health check. I found that my quality scores were significantly down across the board. In plain English, this meant that I was suddenly paying substantially more money for dramatically lower ad positions, and far less traffic overall.

At first, terror struck in my heart. I’ve been reading horror stories of people getting banned from Google AdWords over the past couple of months. Google has recently decided to ban affiliate marketers and PPC arbitragers from AdWords once and for all, and their automated system for doing so has unfortunately gotten many honest advertisers banned in the  process due to similarities in site look & feel. There really isn’t any way around this for them, since using a bot is the only feasible solution when you’re dealing with millions of landing pages on the AdWords network.

I was afraid that my new, highly effective squeeze pages had gotten me caught in that trap, so I quickly contacted AdWords to find out what was going on.

To my relief, I received a prompt and courteous reply from a very helpful AdWords rep. It was not the “your are banned for life” email that many people were receiving – whew! Instead, he explained in detail that my landing pages no longer fit into AdWords guidelines, which they are now enforcing very strictly.

Basically, Google has decided that squeeze pages do not contribute to a good user experience. They’ve classified them into the category of “data collection sites,” and I can’t say I blame them. I personally hate being faced with a straight squeeze page that contains no navigation links, and I’ve been conflicted about using them – I never have until very recently, and although it’s sent my opt-in rates through the roof, I’ve always had the unsettling feeling that it screams “scam.”

So, fellow AdWords advertisers, take note: If you’re going to use squeeze pages, do not use them in AdWords! Instead, create a separate landing page to send AdWords traffic to that is not a straight squeeze page, but is content-rich instead (even if it does have an opt-in form on it – as it should).

(While you’re at it, it won’t hurt to really optimize your AdWords performance by creating separate and unique landing pages for each individual ad group, which are extremely relevant to the keywords in each respective ad group. This is how top AdWords advertisers get extreme returns on their AdWords investment.)

By the way – if you have or are in danger of being suspended or banned from AdWords, Google recently announced that they’ve hired a dispute team and are now allowing you to appeal the decision, so it’s not the dead-end final decision it was just a couple of months ago. However, it’s still not something you want to deal with, so if you have anything in your AdWords account that violates their guidelines (PPC arbitrage, affiliate “review” sites, etc.), get it out of there now before you get caught! Those offenses in particular will result in a lifetime ban.