Search Engine Marketing Blog: piloSEO

So I was doing some research today and in the process I was looking at some tools to check the redirect being used by some web sites. In the process I did a quick search for “Redirect Test” in Google and found a strange AdWords listing. I am not sure what the purpose is or even if it means anything. I just found it odd. What I found was an ad placed by under the domain googletest.com. When you go to the googletest.com site I found that it is for sale so it is obviously not a Google owned domain. It appears that either Google has pulled the ad or the owner of the domain has stopped running it so it is no longer showing up right now.

What the heck is this?

Both ads have the same copy and both appeared to be using a Doubleclick tracking URL. It resolves to a page with a 1×1 pixel Gif Image that obviously can’t be seen. Here are the screen shots showing the listings I found. Both search phrases, redirect test and redirection test, both had the same result with the same ad copy, which was “This is a test ad. Please Ignore it.” Of course to me that is the most compelling ad copy ever.

Has anyone seen this?

Or something similar. I am trying to figure out the rationale behind this and am not really sure what it could be. Does anyone have any ideas as to why someone would do this. The landing page was blank so there was no way to monetize the ad. Let me know if you can think of any reason why this was done or what purpose it serves?

Popularity: 28% [?]

• New AdWords Template Center for My Client Center Accounts
  I just noticed a new message in my AdWords MCC Account offering a the ability to create and share templates between linked accounts. According the...
• Changes in Yahoo’s Site Explorer. Same Old 301 Problems.
  I am still having issues with Yahoo Site Explorer providing me with link data for all of my pages. I do notice some distinct changes...