The Inside AdWords Blog announced that beginning April 1, 2008, AdWords will no longer allow redirects and vanity URLs in place of ad landing pages. This update is in congruence with Google's efforts to provide more relevant advertising results and higher quality experiences to users.

"We'd like to give you advance notice of an update to our display URL policy, which will take effect on April 1st," said Blake. "While the majority of advertisers will not be affected at all, action will be required from those who are."

After the deadline on April 1, no exceptions would be allowed with regards to the display URL policy. Furthermore, the policy will be "strictly enforced" irrespective of past approvals and applies to all the advertisers from the due date.

Strong emphasis has been laid on the match between the display URL and the destination URL or the Landing page URL. An example would be that if your destination URL is www.google.com, your display URL must also be www.google.com. The following would not be acceptable display URLs for an ad for www.google.com:

• www.google.co.uk - because this URL leads to a different site
• www.gogle.com - even though this URL simply redirects to www.google.com it is still not acceptable
• www.gooogle.com - because this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.google.com

For the advertisers who use tracking URLs within the destination field of their ads, only if the URL of their landing page matches that of their display URL, their ads will be approved.

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