Google Slap is a penalty imposed by Google on AdWords accounts if the landing page is irrelevant, of poor quality, or loads slowly. This increases the pay-per-click amount and lowers the Page Rank, making it difficult for small businesses to afford AdWords. It is difficult to challenge Google’s rating, and some companies have to change their domain name. To avoid a Google Slap, businesses should have original and meaningful content on their landing page, comply with Google’s editorial guidelines, and avoid creating a landing page with just ads.
Google Slap is a term used without affection primarily by small businesses that rely on Google AdWords accounts to drive business for their sites. AdWords for Google allows people to have their ads for their business on pages with keywords or topics related to their products. Typically people who have AdWords accounts pay each time someone clicks on their ad, usually at around $05-10 US Dollars (USD) per click.
However, if Google detects or determines that the page potential customers visit when they click your ad is unrelated, is of poor quality, or even loads too slowly, it can take punitive action in the form of a Google Slap. Basically, Google Slap accomplishes several things at once. First, jack up the price by your pay per click amount, sometimes asking as much as $10 USD per click, which most small vendors can’t afford to pay. Second, they can lower your Page Rank (PR), which automatically means you’ll have to pay more to get your ads featured through AdWords.
Google obviously has the right to determine which pages represent the best quality and keyword match, but in 2008 a series of Google Slap actions on small vendors had a considerable impact, quickly driving many companies out of business. Many have argued that their pages complied with Google’s AdWords recommendations for pages, yet they still receive a very low PR ranking. This meant that the enormously high pay-per-click rates were prohibitively expensive and comparable to some vendors’ ban on using AdWords, although information searches on these pages could still be revealed in a normal Google search, but not in the ads.
When some companies get a Google Slap, the only thing they can do is change their domain completely because it is very difficult to challenge Google on their ratings or page rating. There are horror stories on the Internet on well-known pages, with excellent authoritative and original information being slapped and unable to recover. If you decide that Google AdWords is for you, you should definitely read all about what Google searches to avoid getting a Google Slap.
Some things Google seems to be consistently looking for include original and meaningful content on landing pages (the page a person goes to when they click on your ad), transparent business reporting and initial insight into how you do business, and easy ways to research the your website from the landing page. To avoid a slap from Google you’ll want to not create a landing page that’s just a summary and lots of ads for other vendors, and you need to make sure your page complies with Google’s editorial guidelines as well.
If you’ve gotten a Google Slap, it can be very difficult to fight it. Many website experts recommend deleting your current domain name and starting over, or looking for other ways to generate traffic to your site. Some people use pay per click ads on alternative search engines, which can help increase business. In particular, companies like Yahoo may be better choices to place your ads if you can’t get Google to change their opinion of your site.
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