Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Following Google's Ad Rules

We warn you about some commonly broken rules in the following sections, but you should still take ten minutes to read Google's editorial guidelines at https://adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html.

Punctuation

Google's rules for punctuation in your AdWords ads are pretty simple:

• No more than one exclamation point in your text, and not in the headline.
• No repeated punctuation (Tired??!!).
• No unnecessary punctuation ($$ instead of money or $#!! standing in for an expletive).

Capitalization

The capitalization rules for AdWords ads are that you can't use excess capitalization, such as FREE or SIDE EFFECTS.

However, you can capitalize acronyms (SCUBA) and abbreviations (MPH).

Since early 2011, Google has been showing the subdomain and domain portions of the display URL in all-lowercase letters. It doesn't break Google rules to use capitalization in your display URL, but that won't show up in the search results as capitals.

As a best practice in our agency, we still use capital letters in our display URLs on the chance that Google will someday bring back display URL capitalization.

Spelling and grammar

Google doesn't like ads that look like they were written by toddlers. Make sure that all words are spelled correctly. If you don't have an eye and ear for grammar, get someone who does to review your ad. Spell checkers can't pick up mistakes like using ...