According to a recent post over at SearchEngineLand.com, Google is getting ready to permanently ban certain advertisers from the AdWords advertising network . Author Barry Schwartz believes that the bans are due to an increased number of advertisers running fraud and scam websites. This may be Google's attempt to weed out those "skunk" advertisers.
As a Denver online advertiser,
do I have anything to worry about?
The answer is almost certainly no. That said, take a good look at Google's editorial guidelines before you participate in AdWords. Google actually provides a list of reaons why an account may become banned. If your website participates in the following, you're a candidate to get banned:
- Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information
- Arbitrage sites without relevant and original content that are designed for the purpose of showing ads
- Affiliate sites without relevant and original content that are designed to drive traffic to another site with a different domain
- "Get-rich quick" sites
- Malware sites that install software on a visitor's computer
- Poor comparison shopping or travel sites whose primary purpose is to send users to other shopping/travel comparison sites, rather than to provide useful content or additional search functionality
To summarize: If you're up to no good, just want to show ads, or are an affiliate website that provides no original content or value - then you're a candidate to get banned. If you're a legitimate Denver small business, you have nothing to worry about.
How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?
Well - while most Denver advertisers won't be impacted at all - there is the possibility that some Denver advertisers will be paying a bit less for clicks than they had in the past.
Example of How Some Might Benefit From Lower Bid Prices: Let's say you're a Denver metro travel agent competing on travel to the Galapagos islands. Unfortunately for you, your ads are competing against a bunch of these soon-to-be banned thin affiliate websites. These competing sites offer little value to the end user and in most cases encourage a quick redirect to another website. Now, these sites will be banned, and you won't be in an auction competing against them anymore. This could effectively lower your cost per click for the same ad position in AdWords.