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Google Grants URL Policy Change
On the heels of the Google Grants Adsense Violation Notices going out, the Google has also made changes to the URL policy and has begun sending notices to nonprofits in the Google Grants program that are promoting more than one website via their Google Grant.
The notice reads in part:
We are writing to inform you of a change we are making to our URL policy.
Google Grantees may only promote the one website domain name associated with the registered nonprofit that approved for Google Grants. We realize that some nonprofits may have separate domain names for events or fundraisers. However, to maintain the integrity of our program, we now require that Google Grantees only promote the one domain name associated with the nonprofit that was approved for Google Grants.
For more on the URL policy, please visit the Help Center article:
https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/1657899?hl=enThe new policy, now prohibits promoting more than one URL. Moving forward grantees will only be able to promote the website URL that was approved for use with the Google Grant.
Previously, nonprofits were allowed to promote different URLs for events and fundraisers via the Google Grant. However, the new policy only allows organizations to promote the ONE URL for the registered nonprofit approved in the Google Grants application. The new URL policy does continue to allow the promotion of subdomains and sub-folders.
Google Grantees must remove any extra domain names from their account by July 2013. After a short grace period, the Grants team will begin enforcing the new policy and any Grantees that continue to promote multiple domain names or a domain name not associated with the registered nonprofit will be subject to removal from the Google Grants program.
One of the issues that we are seeing from the various message boards is that some Grantees do not remember the original URL they applied for the Google Grant under. In my talks with the Grants team they have shared that, “As long as the website reflects the mission of the organization approved for Grants, they are fine. They simply must only advertise the one website domain name in their account and should delete all other ads and campaigns that are running different domain names.”
So if your organization has received notice and you are not sure of which URL you should promote, you will need to choose the website that either they remember was the one approved for Grants or matched the true nature of the IRS-approved nonprofit.
If you need assistance in updating your Google Grants AdWords account before the July 2013 deadline, please feel free to reach out to us.
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Hello Robert,
Further to your post about the Google Grants URL policy change: My organization, and at least one other, has been told by Google that we are advertising additional URLs, so are not eligible to have our Google Grant renewed.
However, our campaign which advertised an additional URL ended in January 2011 – long before this URL policy change came into effect.
This old campaign is now Deleted, the adGroups and ads associated with it are Deleted, but of course the record of the campaign, with the additional URLs, remains (grayed out) in our account. I’ve tried to email Google about this but have not gotten anywhere.
I imagine there are a lot of non-profits who could get a nasty surprise about this. Have you heard anything about this?
P.S. Thank you for being such a presence in the community.