Many companies manage multiple websites, each offering different services. In some cases, these services will be related to one another, in other cases they will be completely separate operations. How Adwords should be managed and arranged between them is a very interesting question.
First of all, our experience shows that different sites under a single adwords account does not, in general, cause problems. However, it is worth being careful in some circumstances where it does make a difference:
Where you have a long established account in good standing, that account has a certain history which can be of benefit for launching a new campaign. This is typically only worthy of consideration where your campaigns need to be fast and agile. A longer startup and history-creation period should not be a problem in most cases.
If two of your sites target the same search terms, then you should think carefully before combining them into the same account as Google will try to prevent them both showing at the same time. Normally, not showing both is a logical action on the part of Google as if both sites are offering the same thing, showing both means not giving the Adwords Visitor as good a selection of options. For an advertiser, it isn't always a good idea to pay for two visits by the same visitor just because you have two ads – this is particularly the case in industries where visitors will typically price-shop through all the Adwords shown.
For web development companies, umbrella companies and similar, the two different sites may be entirely unrelated. As an example, an web developer may have two sites under their management which offer legal services; the brick-and-mortar operation the sites represent is typically entirely unrelated and so they would be disadvantaged if only one of them could be shown at a time in the ad results.
Luckily, truly separate endeavours typically have separate financial arrangements. This should enable an Adwords account to be opened for each separate undertaking, each with their own payment details. The marketing team should then make use of the Multiple Client Center from Google which allows multiple accounts to be managed through one login and one simple to administer experience.
If one or both of the sites in question is a heavy Adwords user, then it is likely that there are already multiple campaigns running for that site. Starting multiple campaigns is a useful way to organise and control different sets of ads and different advertising approaches. A standard Adwords account limits advertising to twenty-five campaigns; on application an account which needs it may be upgraded to a hundred campaigns.
If it is anticipated that the standard campaign number allocations will be insufficient for all the sites you wish to put under one account, and if the sites are independent enough to permit it, then separate accounts may be a good idea.
Google Adwords bills the whole account at one time; there is no option to assign some campaigns to one payment source and the rest to another. If your financial and accounting structures are such that you need to show a per-site breakdown of expenses to be reconciled with spending, separate accounts may be a good idea.
If, for any reason, you are flying a bit close to the sun with your Adwords account and doing things which you fear may not be smiled upon by a manual review by Google, you should be aware that if your account is terminated it will affect all your campaigns and not just one. In this case, you should ensure that your different sites are as separate as possible; preferably as different legal entities with their own banking accounts. Be very careful in this case because Google will not hesitate to put a stop on all your Adwords accounts at the same time should they feel the need.
If you feel that you need to get more exposure by pushing your competitors down in the Adwords results, and have decided to risk being thrown out of Adwords altogether, then needless to say you do need to operate multiple accounts with multiple websites. Of course, we don't recommend this kind of approach and won't take on a client which insists upon using it.
Alloyfish
