vikingpwr - 11:49 pm on Mar 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

In the cases I am able to record the referring URL I can physically see where the click came from. MapQuest seems to be the biggest offender - they show our ads regardless of what the user types into the search box.

In cases where we are unable to record a URL which is about 60% of the time these inbound clicks land on our site and immediately leave 100% of the time. I am able track dwell time and number of page requests (by page) for these inbound clicks. And 100% of the time they just leave with out responding to any of our call to actions.

When the click comes from google.com our response rates are 90%. When the click comes from a non google.com domain and we record the URL the response rates are < 5%. When the click comes from a URL that we are unable to record the response rates are 0%.

I think it is more than a coincedence that no URL = no conversions. It is like our listing is purposely being shown regardless of the search term and the user is incented to click on the listing.

So, given these data points it is clear to me to turn off the search network, however, by doing this my imp volume drops 90%! which seems absurb. I tought that the majority of my traffic would be coming from the goole.com domain - but instead the opposite is true. Maybe this is why Google's stock is going south.