I remember when I first got an inactive notice in AdWords. It didn’t make sense to me then, but now I don’t get them at all. Makes me wonder if I’ve gotten better, or has AdWords?

When you put ads up with Google, there are many best practices to think about when writing ads, picking landing pages, and crafting out which key phrases to use. I don’t want to review all of them, so instead I’ll point you to a few nice reviews of them recently posted on SEOmoz.

What I am thinking about today is if Google is getting too bogged down. Just last week, I noted an ad showing up third for a highly competitive term in my client’s industry. I will, like most SEMs, click on competitors ads to get the “feel” of the user experience with their site and ads versus our own. This ad perplexed me though. When I clicked on the ad, I was taken to the domain listed (an AdWords requirement), but given a slow loading picture of a page that had a hyperlink.

Once I clicked that hyperlink, I was redirected at least three times (ad is gone now, so I can’t test it now), and finally landed on a short-term loan page. This had nothing to do with the original search! How was this showing in AdWords, much less at the TOP?

I informed the “authorities” but by the end of the day, the ad was mysteriously gone. Huh. I guess props go to the AdWords police. But oddly only after I noticed it. Yes, I know, what happens when a tree falls in the middle of the forest, if no one hears it and all that.

THEN …

Ciaran over in the UK gets some funny results from AdWords as well. He ends up wondering the same thing I wondered, why is this showing at all?

Advertiser Lead Time

So part of me knows that there is some lead time from when you put up an ad before Google completely knocks it down. That’s at least what I told my bosses when explaining the situation to them. Most advertisers want their ad up RIGHT NOW. So Google learned from Overture (who used to make you wait days, even weeks, while they reviewed your stuff) and started putting things up almost immediately.

But it seems to me that they are getting a little lax on their review time. I’m curious to know if anyone else has seen this phenomena recently.