Google Slap

Google Slap is not done because Google hates you.  Nothing personal, but Google just needs to protect its name.  It needs to maintain its reputation as the most reliable search engine, so it has to punish the bad guys who intentionally violate their rules to make Google look bad or the good guys who unintentionally make them look bad.

Ignorance of the law excuses no one, so it is very important that you know Google’s AdWords rules for you to know more what to do and what not to do.  Getting slapped by Google can be very painful, and it can lead to great losses from your end.  Normally, people who have AdWords accounts pay per click on their ads, that cost from 0.015 up to 0.10 US Dollars per click.

AdWords pays attention to the importance of the relevance of Google ads to a site’s content.  If Google determines that a page does not have relevant content to what is being advertised, or has poor quality, or loads too slow, it can take action with the Google Slap.

Why Does Google Slap Websites?

Google Slap is done to accomplish several things: 1) to drive up the rate of your Pay Per Click (PPC) amount (up to $10 per click, which is largely unaffordable); and 2) to downgrade your page ranking (PR), which makes you pay more to get your ads featured on AdWords.

To maintain its reputation as the best search engine, Google has all the right to protect its name by determining which pages have great quality that match keywords.  If you have experienced or heard of it, Google Slap made a round of actions in 2008 on small vendors which led to many companies going out of business.

There are those who refuted the slap, with an argument that they conformed to AdWords rules and recommendations, but yet still got low PR rankings.  This action translated to the resulting high pay per click fees to be prohibitive, thus preventing certain vendors from using AdWords.  On the other hand, these pages might still get indexed in regular searches on Google.

Some companies that received Google Slap had only one thing to do: completely change the domain.  This is because once slapped, it is too difficult to challenge Google’s ratings and assessment.  There are even some horror stories on how some authoritative pages got slapped and still were not able to recover.  However, if you still decide that your business needs Google AdWords to optimize its potential, then it is your obligation to read all the information on what you need to avoid getting slapped.

Original and relevant content on a landing page is very important for Google, among many other considerations.  Apart from that, you also need to observe transparency in your business dealings, like giving upfront information on how you do business and easy methods to search your website from your landing page.  For example, it is a very bad practice to create a landing page that is just a table of contents, with a lot of ads for other vendors.  Your page needs to conform to Google’s Editoral Guidelines, which will also help you achieve professionalism.

Top Reasons Why Sites Get The Google Slap

Google Slap is a difficult thing to argue with.  In most situations, three of the most common reasons why it could happen to you include: poor website content, poor keyword selection, and bad click-through rates.

Poor content is attributed to a website that does not have any relevant, useful and unique content.  If you copy your content from other websites, you are in a very big trouble.  Once a person lands on your page and they find nothing in your site that’s useful, the person will not blame you.  Google will be blamed for showing bad websites in the search results.

In terms of keyword selection, you do not want to have too many non-relevant keywords on your Google account.  You have to pick more targeted and specific keywords.  A better way in grouping your ads is to avoid having too many keywords in a single ad group.  Instead, make multiple groups for these plenty of keywords.

Bad Click-through Rates also mean that your ad is not showing to enough people in order to receive the desired number of clicks.  When this happens, Google makes an assessment that your ad is non-relevant.  It is better to have highly relevant search results to make your targeted audience happy.  This also makes Google happier as it will only earn when somebody clicks the ad.

Arguing with Google Slap is a tedious and almost hopeless situation.  Avoiding the Google Slap is something that you can be proactive with if you simply get yourself informed and updated of what the rules are.  That’s a simple way on how to dominate Google!