AdWords infinitum IV

At 2:30 pm today, I checked the two ads created yesterday and awaiting approval, and both had been approved. I'm very glad to see that the occupation ad isn't being treated like the Captain Uncut ad.

Not long after that I retrieved my email for the first time today (usually much earlier) and found a reply from Sarah that had been sent at 6:42 am today:

Hi John

Thanks for your patience. I've confirmed that your account is out of the review and your ads are now running on Google.

We apologize for the disruption to your ad delivery and thank you for your understanding.
Best,
Sarah

So they did send a notification. Good. I'm glad.

And then this: I received an email today from Google AdWords that was dated Wednesday, December 31, 1969.

Okey-dokey. It read:

Dear AdWords customer,

We are writing today to ask you to complete a brief survey about your experience with Google AdWords. The survey should take about 10 minutes to complete and your responses will be kept confidential.

Your feedback is critical in helping us understand the challenges and opportunities you face every day, so we can prioritize the tools and services that will best help you. To get started just click on the link below, or cut and paste the link into a browser window.

I was surprised that they wanted feedback, since they're so big they don't need it. I noticed that the email was from the Google AdWords Research Team, while Sarah's email had been signed the Google AdWords Team. I picture the two departments going at it, launching attacks and counterattacks via email and texting. Or not.

I then noticed that the link was to survey.googleratings.com. After a moment of wondering why it wasn't ratings.google.com/survey, I clicked on the link and landed on a legitimate-looking page. But then I thought "'Googleratings'? Naw, this is a phishing site" and clicked the Back button, thinking that if damage were going to be done it was already done. I did searches for "googleratings.com" (on Google, wasn't that smart?) and came up with no warnings that it was a scam but also no really clear statements that it was genuinely genuine. Hmm, ponder, ponder. With the date of the email being strange, I thought I'd rather err on the side of safety and sent the following email to them:

About the googleratings.com survey, I would feel better about going to a subdomain of google.com, like survey.google.com. The googleratings.com domain could easily be a phishing site. Or it could be no more than Google handling its accounting like Mitt Romney handles his, but I still would be reluctant to participate in the survey if that were the case.

I appreciate very much your interest in learning about users' experience with AdWords. I'm willing to participate in the survey, but even if I'm assured that it's a genuine site, I'm reluctant to participate at googleratings.com. It's like (how should I describe it?), it sounds like the piano needs tuning. It doesn't ring quite true.

Thanks.
John