PALO ALTO, CA - GOOD news for owners of high quality domains ... BAD news for many types of affiliate marketers: Based on feedback from both its advertisers and users, Google will no longer allow redirects and vanity URLs in Adwords results.
According to Google's Adwords page, ads will be approved if (and only if) the URL of an advertiser's landing page matches that of his display domain. This policy change is consistent with Google's efforts to present relevant results in its Adwords platform.
This means, for example, that an advertiser cannot display "EcommerceConsulting.com" unless her destination URL is also "EcommerceConsulting.com." It also means that short, authoritative dot-com domains like CEOJobs.com are likely to outperform domain names like ChiefExecutiveJobs.biz -- just like they do in Google's organic SERPs. And as you may know, lower performing ads may be penalized with higher bid prices ...
Moral of the story: You need at least one great generic domain, if for no other reason than it's good for your paid search initiatives. And paid search is really important.
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