ancaster

Google Ads (Search)

Paid results on Google search, bought at auction against keywords. The largest and oldest self-serve intent channel there is, and the one whose policy language on intermediate pages is the most explicit of any platform — which makes it the reference case for whether a page like ours is a legitimate destination or a bridge page.

Will they accept our page?

Conditional

Google is the platform that names this directly, and the condition is sharp. Its insufficient-original-content policy disallows "bridge pages, doorways, gateways, or other intermediate pages that are only used to link to other sites", and its ad-network abuse policy lists promoting "'bridge' or 'gateway' destinations that are solely designed to send users elsewhere". Driving arbitrage traffic to destinations with little or no original content is called out by name. A storefront carrying a researched verdict, a comparison against named alternatives and a caveat is original content and clears this; a storefront that is a button and a logo is precisely the thing the policy bars. The rule is therefore not "can we advertise here" but "is the page carrying its own research" — and it is the reason ingest refuses a storefront for a brand with no `recommended` block.

The policy it was read from →

What the destination has to do

  • The destination must offer unique value beyond showing ads or forwarding the visitor.
  • Content replicated from another source without added original content or functionality is disallowed — a syndicated copy of a vendor's own marketing would fail.
  • Destination and ad must match; the page must be reachable and functional on the devices targeted.

Buying it

Cost
CPC
Floor
None published — a researched finding, not a blank.
How you get in
self-serve
Where you can buy
Global.
  • CPC — Auction-priced. Software and B2B keywords are among the most expensive inventory on the open web; there is no useful single range to quote and this record does not invent one.

What you can aim at

  • Keyword and match type
  • Location and language
  • Device
  • Audience lists and remarketing
  • Time of day

What comes back

Click parameter gclid · pixel yes · server-side yes

gclid on the destination URL, plus Enhanced Conversions and the Google Ads API for server-side upload. The most complete measurement of any source on this list, and the only one where a conversion can be reported back from our side rather than observed from theirs.

Good for

Buying a named intent. Someone searching a category or a comparison has already decided to decide, which is the same visitor the storefront is written for.

Not for

Bidding on the advertiser's own brand terms — most affiliate programmes forbid it outright, and it is the fastest way to lose a programme rather than a campaign.

The honest part

The bridge-page policy is enforced by review and by algorithm, and an account suspended for it is slow and unpleasant to recover. The safe reading is that the storefront must be a genuinely researched page before a single click is bought against it, not after.

Read from