Ah, google actually does tell you why. In my case, it’s due to an “inaccurate display URL”. So I think we’ll need to set up unbounce so it points to a subdomain on our own domain. I’ll try this.

Hi Tom! Yes, Google is pretty picky about that, and that’s exactly why we have subdomain support. Definitely let us know if setting up a subdomain doesn’t fix it for you, or if you have any issues setting up a subdomain.

Hi Tom, if your page is already published you won’t (currently) be able to change the URL - just fire us an email to support@unbounce.com with the page in question and once your custom domain is set up, and we’ll be able to make those changes for you.

Thanks guys – I set up the CNAME stuff this morning, and it took a few hours to propogate, but the domain seems to be pointing to the right place now. I’ll email you directly to update the landing page I’ve already made.

Oh and another question: do you know if google will approve a display URL of www.example.com when the destination URL is promo.example.com? In other words, do they care if subdomains match?

Hi Tom, google will approve a destination URL that is a sub-domain of your display URL. They just want to make sure the top-level domain of yourdomain.com match for both display and destination.

Example: (acceptable)

Destination URL: promo.yourdomain.com/product

Display URL: yourdomain.com

An exception to this is if you’re using a domain that hosts many different independent entities like blogspot.com or wordpress.com (blogspot.com as your display and myblog.blogspot.com as your destination would not be approved)

You can read a bit more about it here and here…

Hi

Google didn’t approve my campaign and I guess the reason is that there isn’t a match between my ad URL domain address and the one for the URL destination landing page (the one I am preparing here at unbounce).

Do I really need to set up a CNAME in order to workaround this problem? What is the easiest solution available (since I don’t want to loose my company domain information at the ad)?

Hi Joao! The easiest way really is to setup a CNAME. Not only will Google like you more, but the naming consistency reassures visitors to your page. Can you explain what you mean by losing your company domain information? By setting up a custom domain in Unbounce (like “ads.mycompany.com”), you can still keep your main domain (like "www.mycompany.com").

Hi Carl. Thanks for the quick response. By “loosing” I was referring the possibility of removing or replace that info by another (such as the URL that unbouce provides me. That way, the two URLs would become consistent). I don’t see a valid reason for google to do this. Unless their preparing to launch a new App…

Google has never allowed you to show one URL and send the clicker to another. This has been their policy since Day One. It’s the right policy too.

I believe you’re right (both you and Google btw). Only thing is that there should be a easier way to place ads using landing pages.

Well, we hear you on that one, we’re all about trying to make any use of landing pages as easy as we can! Curious what the biggest stumbling block was for you. Setting up the custom domain?

Facebook Ads, POF Ads, MyAds, and TrafficVance all have much less rules than Google Adwords in case anyone was looking for more traffic with less headaches.

Unbounce pages work GREAT with these networks

Yes, although you provided me with an email already prepared to send to my sys admin (and that was great!). My problem is that more than twenty years after beginning working with the internet, I still find myself depending on someone else - and I don’t like that feeling. At least, from now on, I will be able to run my unbounce campaigns on my own.

Here’s a variation of this question I haven’t seen answered: Say I set up the CNAME unbounce.mydomain.com to host my landing pages. Now, mydomain.com already has a number of other subdomains, each targeted to a different audience and different from each other as well as different from www.mydomain.com. I want to make a landing page for AdWords for services available on sub1.mydomain.com. What display URL do I use?

As far as I can tell from reading the AdWords docs, “mydomain.com” won’t be acceptable in this case because sub1.mydomain.com is, effectively, a different site with different content.

Thanks.

CJR