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Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap?

September 8th, 2008 by Mike Reining Read more about Google AdWords Tips

Two 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

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About the Author

Mike Reining 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

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11 comments, add yours! »

11 Responses to “Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap?”

  1. September 10th, 2008 at 5:05 am Chirag Chamoli

    Is our beloved Google Dead?

  2. September 10th, 2008 at 4:01 pm Steve Gill

    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.

  3. September 11th, 2008 at 10:00 pm Vishen

    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.

  4. September 12th, 2008 at 12:32 am dev

    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.

  5. September 14th, 2008 at 9:19 pm john kent

    i think change land­ing page and key­word is good for recover from a Google Slap

  6. September 29th, 2008 at 11:06 am 7 Adwords Secrets : Internet Business Coaching by Terry Dean

    […] How to Recover from the Google Slap […]

  7. September 30th, 2008 at 7:59 pm dana

    Thanks for the info.

    What about arti­cles. In case I have orig­i­nal arti­cles on my web­site that got slap. Should I add new articles?

  8. October 10th, 2008 at 7:04 am Jeremiah

    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

  9. October 19th, 2008 at 11:57 am Jon Clark

    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!

  10. February 24th, 2009 at 6:22 am Homestead Users

    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.

  11. December 14th, 2009 at 2:36 am Tim Scott

    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.

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