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“And castles made of sand,
slip into the sea, …eventually”

Jimi Hendrix - “Castles Made of Sand”; Axis Bold As Love

Yesterday, sometime in the afternoon my time (EST), Google started going to work on my Adwords campaigns on the Search Network. It clearly was a “Google Slap” in action, but this time around it seemed to be acting a little differently.

At first, it was only a few ad groups in one campaign and then only certain keywords. While some keywords were getting hit with the usual $5 and $10 minimum bids, which are typical of a Slap, others were hanging on at .05 with “Great” Quality Scores.

But that sinking feeling let me know that I had another nice generic-sounding domain that was quickly turning into a virtual paper weight.

Once tainted by the Slap, a domain can never be used again for advertising with Google Adwords. At least if you balk at paying $10 for your bids.

Here’s what I’ve observed so far with this latest Slap:

*The one direct-linking campaign (”Google Cash Method“) that I have running on the Search Network is still showing “Great” Quality Scores for most keywords. I’ve noticed this trend for a while and it seems Google is a bit more tolerant of direct-linking affiliate campaigns. Overall, Google still appears to be very anti-affiliate as well as anti-IM. I have heard of some sales and squeeze page sites getting slapped this time and even some “Google Cash Method” campaigns haven’t been immune.

I’m a big fan of “Campaign Blasts” by Matt Levenhagen. He’s taken the basic concept of the “Google Cash Method” and turned it into an elegant system that really gets to heart of PPC affiliate marketing. It’s definitely a numbers game, and Matt’s “Campaign Blasts” shows you how to make the numbers add up in your favor by minimizing your losses and increasing the chances that you’ll uncover enough winners to turn a decent profit.

*My campaigns running separately on the Adwords Content Network for the same domain that got Slapped on the Search Network, are still getting impressions and clicks. Content Slaps do exist, but tend to happen apart from Search Slaps. So it remains to be seen how much longer the Content Network campaigns hold up.

*A Search Network campaign that I’ve been running non-stop for almost a year remains untouched with mostly “Great” Quality Scores. These pages are on a site with a home page PR3. Not a very impressive PR to say the least, but it seems  to lend some credence to the theory that Google is giving higher Quality Scores to indexed pages. This seems to fly in the face of the primary advantage of using PPC to quickly buy traffic to new sites.

What are we supposed to do?

Build multi-page sites, do intensive SEO, and then wait around for a few months until PR is conferred before launching an Adwords campaign to pages within that site? Might be a workable strategy, but we need to eat in the mean time.

At this point, I think I’ll be spending less time advertising on the Adwords Search Network, at least with my own landing pages. Direct linking is looking a whole lot more appealing and I’m currently shaking the trees looking for merchants who allow it.

Despite having a large portion of my PPC portfolio stomped out, I can’t say that I harbor too much anger towards Google. It’s just another reminder that my business needs some more work to put it on firmer ground for long term growth and prosperity.