Being the AdWords guru that you are, you already know why you’re not supposed to mix search and content campaigns when it comes to AdWords. Well you might be surprised to find that your search only campaign’s ads are being displayed on Parked Domains even though you have disabled the content network.
Have a look and see. Within your AdWords account, visit the tools section under the Campaign Management tab. Then click on the Site and Category Exclusion link. Select your search only campaign and you will see that under the Page types your ads have been showing for parked domains.
The question is whether you want this type of traffic on a search only campaign? If you have conversion tracking setup, you will be able to see if you are receiving any conversions from the Parked Domains. If you aren’t, you could easily exclude them all right from this interface.
If you’re wondering what a parked domain is, Google explain that a Parked Domain “is an undeveloped webpage belonging to a domain name registrar or domain name holder“. More like a Made for AdSense site if you ask me. If you are curious, you can run a placement performance report on this particular search campaign in order to see which sites Google are calling Parked Domains. You might be surprised at what you find. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
