Google Adwords Now Allows Site Exclusion for Parked Domains

Looks like I stirred the pot a little when I posted a new thread at Search Engine Watch forums about site exclusion in Adwords. Previously, site exclusion was only available in the Content network. However, at SES Chicago, during the Domaining and Address-Bar Driven Traffic session, Hal Bailey from Google said, and I quote: "There is not a single site that you cannot exclude from Adwords." I came away taking that literally - that ANY partner site could now be excluded from Adwords.

Apparently, that's not exactly true. Parked domains are the only search network sites that can be excluded. Other non-parked domain search partners still are all-or-nothing. On the one hand, that's too bad, because some of those partners may be low-quality (although I'm not aware of any at the moment). On the other hand, it's definitely a step in the right direction. Yahoo and Ask don't easily allow advertisers to opt out of these often-low-quality sites - in fact, many would argue that there is NO opt-out option in Yahoo or Ask. (There really is, but that's another post.) I applaud Adwords for taking this much-needed and long-overdue step in meeting the needs of advertisers.

In addition to the SEW thread, discussion continues at Webmaster World and Search Engine Roundtable .