Google Slap – How to recover from a Google Slap?
September 8th, 2008 by Mike Reining Read more about Google AdWords TipsTwo questions that I frequently get from new AdWords customers are:
1) Why did I get slapped by Google?
2) How do I recover from a Google Slap?
The answers two both questions are actually quite simple:
Why did I get slapped by Google?
Here are the top 4 reasons why people get slapped by Google
Google Slap 1: The content on your page was not related to the keyword that you were bidding on. This is a huge no no which will hurt your Quality Score and you will most likely get slapped by Google.
Solution: Make sure that the content on your landing page matches the keywords you are bidding on.
Google Slap 2: The landing page is a squeeze page and does not link to other web pages.
Solution: In the footer, have at least a couple of links to other sites (on the same domain or other domains). Google frowns upon pure squeeze pages and will slap you if that is what you do.
Google Slap 3: The landing page is full of beautiful graphics but not enough text.
Solution: The Google bot cannot read text that is part of an image file so make sure that all of your copy is in text form.
Google Slap 4: The Ad Groups are not targeted. In other words, you have Ad Groups with many different keywords.
Solution: Break up your Ad Groups into highly targeted Ad Groups
You might say... great... thanks for the tips but what do I do now that I have already gotten slapped by Google?
Remember, the moment you launch a new campaign and a new Ad Group Google will actually have someone manually review your page so if it does not follow all of the above guidelines you are most likely going to get slapped again!
How to recover from a Google Slap?
First, implement all of the suggestions above and then follow these steps.
First try: Delete the campaign and copy and paste all of the Ad Groups into a brand new campaign. It is MUCH easier to start over than to revive a campaign that got slapped.
Second try: If you get slapped again, make sure to weed out all of the keywords that got slapped and then delete the campaign and launch it again.
Third try: Get a new AdWords account. Sometimes your account just might have gotten slapped so many times that it is easier to start fresh with a brand new account.
Fourth try: When all else fails, buy a new domain and grab a new AdWords account.
NOTE: I have only had to implement the above 3 steps. So far, I have never had to buy a new domain to have success with Google AdWords.
Want to learn more about AdWords?
Check out:
Secret AdWords Strategies Revealed
Learn How to Steal Your Competitors Winning Ads
Last 5 posts by
- Do you think SEO in other languages is easier? - September 18th, 2008
- What Does Your Order Button Say? - August 29th, 2008
- Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analysis Indicates...It Just Might - July 23rd, 2008
- Are small businesses dropping out of AdWords? - July 23rd, 2008
- How I Got on The First Page of Google With My Last 4 Blog Posts in a Row - July 23rd, 2008
About the Author
Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype.
Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.
Check out other posts by Mike Reining
If you want to see what's in the private lab...
Ask yourself... which part of your business would you most like to improve?
I can send you 7 tactics related to your specific needs, if you like.
You don't have to buy anything, just take it as a backstage pass into our private course.
Will it give you the solution you've been waiting for?
There's only one way to find out.
Mike Reining
Vishen Lakhiani
Is our beloved Google Dead?
I have been running a landing page for years but wanted to improve my conversion rate. I read somewhere on Mindvalley Labs that I should remove navigation links to prevent visitors from leaving the "sales funnel" (or words to that effect). So I removed the nav links and the result was I got Google Slapped and my keywords have all increased to $13 per click! Now my business is dead in the water and I'm screwed. I hope you suggestions work because my revenue has dropped 75% and it's killing me.
Hi Steve
We've removed navigation links and not seen any drop so it's a lot more complex than just that. But please send me a link to your landing page and let me see if I can help.
Deleting and restarting campaigns actually does not work. Getting a new account on the other hand does.
You might also want to try to bid real high for like 10-15 impressions to get your ctr up anlong with creating a relevant landing page (including many of your keywords) and targeted/appealing adtext.
i think change landing page and keyword is good for recover from a Google Slap
[...] How to Recover from the Google Slap [...]
Thanks for the info.
What about articles. In case I have original articles on my website that got slap. Should I add new articles?
The Google Slap can happen for many reasons only known to Google.
I don't believe that there is a one size fits all type fix for recovering from a Google Slap.(as stated in this post).
I found that sometimes fixing the landing page to include your target keywords works...
Sometimes all I had to do was add links to the page...
And... one time I had to create a brand new Adwords account and setup a new website.
You should test your approach, start with the simple solutions first like making your landing page's content specific to the keywords your bidding on then move to the more complex solutions if you have to.
-Jeremiah
I have a client who just contacted me with an account which had gotten 'super' google-slapped. I'll be interested in incorporating some of this advise to bring it back into shape!
Google slapped my site so hard that I get no search traffic from Google at all. I'm really bummed by this. My site was full of original content but on every page I had an opt in option to get special survey results.
I was wondering if the time when I posted in Craigslist, attaching a link to my site, if that caused the slap. You know Craigslist management they hate spam.
I wonder if I was reported by Craigslist admin as spam.
I should have not been slapped, my site was constantly being updated with new stuff.
I had no Adwords campaigns either.
Even though this article is from 2008, alot of your points still hold true. But I'd like to comment on some recent updates from the last slap.
1.) Landing pages are out for good, they have been shutting down anyone witha bridge or landing page.
2.) Opening up a new account doesn't work unless your on a new computr, with a new mac and ip address. New name and credit card for the account. And even then, it's ify.
I think the best thing to do now is just, migrate towards Bing and Yahoo for now, untill this whole Google slap smackdown blows over, just IMO.
Thanks for the info. I had no idea that links to other pages on your site was important. The fact that Google discourages landing pages is a joke. It's internet marketers that made them rich and now they slap us. It is possible that they slap other campaigns within my account even if those campaigns do not break those rules?
I'm a newbie and got the SLAP hard core. Honest mistake....like they care right. So has anyone found anything that works FAST? Thanks for any help.