Do Orphaned Landing Pages Elicit
July 24th, 2006
I need to do more conclusive testing on this issue, but I want to start a dialog and see if anyone else found anything similar regarding the use of Google Adwords and landing pages.
I set up a PPC campaign using Google Adwords and landing pages. Browsers from Google’s campus hit my site landing pages then clicked through to the sitemap 3 times in two days, apparently to check if the pages were orphaned.
On the third day, I woke up to ZERO page rank across my entire Web site except for my blog. I sent a complaint and explained that what Google (apparently) thought were cloaking pages were legit landing pages. It seems that even “legit” landing pages cause problems with Google because they restored the rest of my site the next day be demoted my home page to PR 2.
I could see no other correlation and I know it wasn’t foolproof as a test, but it seems clear that the landing pages were the issue. I am hoping for an explanation from Google, but so far have had none.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Entry Filed under: Internet Marketing
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2 Comments
1. Design Notes: A CSS Web D&hellip | July 24th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
[...] Though I found the whole book to be of value, several subject areas were especially helpful to me. Time and again, I have made attempts at using pay-per-click advertising to send traffic to client Web sites. However, I have rarely showed a measurable gain for these clients. While many factors are relevant to this short disclosure (should a professional ever admit failure? … publicly?) I now have a better understanding of some key shortcomings of my Google Adwords campaigns. Edit: See my comment on this post for some relevant information that this eBook does not address, and notice a more thorough discussion here. [...]
2. Mike | July 25th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
I will have to test this. We just created a new landing page creation software for Google (www.clickmuse.com) and after running it internally for two months we have not seen any drop in the page rank of our own sites. Will let you know if I learn anything more specific.