The Backstory:
At work, we have a division dedicated to staffing and recruiting IT and Engineering professionals. This division has their own website, which is designed to market to employers seeking these types of candidates. Naturally, these types of candidates will wander and stumble upon this site even though it’s designed to attract employers. In an effort to assist these candidates to find what they are looking for, we offer a couple of quick links, and a search form destined for our public job board.
As many companies do, we utilize Google AdWords to market to employers who may be looking for qualified IT and Engineering professionals. For some reason, they have classified our AdWords landing page at http://www.cesnet.com/services/ as a Bridge Page, which Google defines as “a web page created for the main purpose of sending visitors to a different site”.
We submitted a reconsideration request, to which we recieved this friendly reply:
From: AdWords Support
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 4:29 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: Re: [#[redacted]] Site PolicyHello [redacted],
Thank you for your email. Our Policy specialists have reviewed your site www.cesnet.com and confirmed that it’s been disabled for not following our Bridge Page policy. I’ve noticed that it is bridging to another site ‘trilliumjobs.com’. It is fine to bridge to other sites as long as you can justify bridging. You’ll need to have unique and relevant content of the site you are bridging to.
Let me tell you more about our Bridge Page policy and how you can get your site compliant:
OUR BRIDGE PAGE POLICY
Google AdWords doesn’t allow ads that promote bridge pages. A bridge page, also known as a doorway page, is a web page created for the main purpose of sending visitors to a different site. Bridge pages offer little or no unique content and are considered low value to users. Affiliates that display the same characteristics may also be considered bridge pages. To review our Bridge Page policy, please see:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=1310864&guide=1308145&page=guide.cs&answer=190435
We developed this policy in order to offer a high-quality user experience, provide dynamic and differentiated ad results, and to be more transparent about the businesses being advertised. We’ve found that pages with multiple ads leading to the same site provide less relevant results and a lower quality experience for our users. Over time, multiple ads leading to the same source also reduce advertiser performance and lower their return on investment.
HOW YOU CAN GET YOUR SITE COMPLIANT
To comply with our policies, please see the options below.
- Tips and information for consumers considering the product or service
- Unique and informative reviews, ratings, and customer feedback
- Links to relevant articlesThis content shouldn’t be derived directly from other sites or a parent site.
- Redesign your web page to offer multiple, competing offers from different companies for related services.
We encourage you to make improvements to your site. Once you’ve updated your site per our guidelines, please reply to this email. For tips on how to improve your landing page and site quality, please see:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46675
We appreciate your efforts to comply with our policies.
If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Have a good day ahead [redacted] :)
Sincerely,
[redacted]
The Google AdWords Team
I am in complete agreement with the policy Google has set forth regarding Bridge Pages and Doorway Pages and I understand why. My concern here is that the page in question is completely compliant with that policy. Here is my response to the almighty Google:
Hello,
I am writing on behalf of Trillium Staffing Solutions regarding the cesnet.com domain and the email [above]. Specifically http://www.cesnet.com/services/
I respectfully request a reconsideration regarding our current AdWords suspension on this domain, and I vehemently disagree with it being considered a bridge page. The specific point of this page is to target employers who have a need for IT and or Engineering candidates. We too believe in an easy and comprehensive online experience for our potential clients, which is why we have a direct phone number published right on this page. The content on the page is completely relevant to our target audience giving examples of the types of candidates we can assist them in recruiting, showing the benefits of our service, and showing our guarantees to stand by our service. As you mentioned:
Google AdWords doesn’t allow ads that promote bridge pages. A bridge page, also known as a doorway page, is a web page created for the main purpose of sending visitors to a different site. Bridge pages offer little or no unique content and are considered low value to users. Affiliates that display the same characteristics may also be considered bridge pages.
And I definitively state, the ‘main purpose’ of the page at http://www.cesnet.com/services/ is not to redirect them to http://trilliumjobs.com/, but to get our target audience to review the services we offer, and to call the phone number published there. If someone clicks the ad that is NOT in our target audience, but is a job seeker, we offer them direct access to our content which is relevant to them.
We have a unique challenge in that the target audience for this specific page has a large search term overlap with a separate, but just as important target audience of ours, our candidates. As you well know, we can’t control who views or clicks on our ads, especially with a large search term overlap. The best we can do is use terminology which makes it obvious that these ads are meant for employers seeking talented professionals. I believe we have done an excellent job in doing that. Since we will never prevent candidates from clicking these ads, we offer them direct access to the parts of our online presence which is specifically designed for and most valuable to them, http://trilliumjobs.com/. Candidates are just as vital to our organization as employers, so we attempt to make their online experience just as easy and comprehensive.
To more directly reiterate, the point of http://www.cesnet.com/services/ is NOT to mislead, scam, or in any way arbitrarily increase traffic to http://trilliumjobs.com/. The page at http://www.cesnet.com/services/ is our best attempt to showcase our services to our potential clients, while at the same time offering direct access point for our potential candidates (who mistakenly clicked on an employer ad) to the content which is most relevant and important to them, our online job publishing system. Removing the links to our job publishing site, would effectively render the page less effective, and more difficult for the job seekers (who mistakenly click on our ads) to find the content they are looking for, our jobs. We very strongly stand by our current method, in the interest of helping people find what they are looking for.
I strongly believe that the page published at http://www.cesnet.com/services/ is well within compliance of the policy and guidelines described [above]. Specifically,
- Tips and information for consumers considering the product or service
This page offers information regarding the services we provide as an IT and Engineering staffing agency. It gives relevant examples of the types of recruitment we do, explains the benefits of our service, and gives a direct contact point to our sales representatives. Also,
This content shouldn’t be derived directly from other sites or a parent site.
The content on this page is distinctly unique to this page alone. We are not in any way plagiarizing, or aggregating content from any other source. We are simply doing our best to explain the services we offer to employers, while giving a direct access link for job seekers, to our job content.
Thank you so much for taking the time to reconsider this issue, as it is of utmost importance to us. If you have any concerns or questions, or need further clarification on the intent of the page in question, please feel free to contact me.
Travis Hegner
IT Group Leader
Trillium Staffing Solutions
I am still waiting on their response, and I’ll update this article. Meanwhile, what do you think? Should http://www.cesnet.com/services/ be considered a Bridge Page? Consider the examples given on their support page, and let me know what you think!
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