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I'm pretty sure that the two statements were independent. That they were saying if you are just looking at referrals, then clicks due to the GoTo database will appear as clicks from the partner (eg AV) in your raw access logs instead of GoTo.
It all depends on what URL the partners uses. I guess if the extension after the ? is used in their partners display, then you cna count every apperance of the go to extra string as a GoTo database click?
Bit technological for me, but i guess uts how their partners parse the GoTo URL's.
However (there's always a however, right) I've seen evidence as recently as last spring that other SEs spider GoTo and use those results. If that still happens, the modified URL could spread around like a virus!
It's good to see the security conscious statement. I emailed GoTo last week to ask about IP spoofing and competitive clicking, the issue raise on another thread [webmasterworld.com]. Didn't get an answer (didn't expect one, actually, just wanted to raise the issue) but this is as timely as if I did get a response.
Goto has mechanisms in place to prevent advertisers from being [wrongly] charged. The mechanisms are proprietary and patent pending. We do not say much about them because we feel providing this information would give would be abusers an unnecessary leg up.What I will say is that the methods border on artificial intelligence. They are as savvy about query density, IP density, URL density, advertiser density as any human being observing the click stream. So, too many clicks along the above listed dimensions (and other dimensions that we won't disclose) serve as trigger points to monitoring software which then prevents abusive clicks from being billed.
In summary, we put a lot of time, thought and effort into advertiser security. The security comes in layers, from the outside (routers) to the inside (observing click stream behavior patterns). We have checkpoints all along the way.
Nick Dalton
GoTo.com
clientservices
I still like the idea, but it just hasn't been a high enough priority -- current clients feel comfortable with their investment in GoTo and have no suspicions about any funky clicks.
I will be setting up GoTo campaign for a new client in three or four weeks, and probably will try it then.
Has anyone been trying the ?goto trick?
I can already see that some of these terms are very competitive in bidding, so we do have some concern about competitive clicks and will be watching the account closely. I appreciate GoTo's help on this tracking idea.
These terms are in the 50 cent area, not the buck or more stratosphere. But they're going up really fast, and it's hard to maintain a top three right now. I'm going to watch it like a hawk, especially in the beginning.
I had a ratio of clicks to sales pretty well figured out (based on 6 months of data) before I bought into Goto and the other pay for clicks SEs. Now that ratio is way off. The increased traffic does not bring the sales that I would have expected if I had the same amount of traffic without the PPCs.
Bogus clicks on these pay for clicks engines -- I think -- is a problem that has not been fully explored or talked about among us.
There are all sorts of ways bogus clickers hired by or employed by competitors can run up clicks on your bidded listing. Even a one-person operation can do that with little trouble or effort.
I know Goto is concerned about this, as are all the other PPCs, but I don't have much confidence they can really protect against it, regardless of what they say.
Bottom line -- test it out I guess: Each website is different in what each expects from the traffic they get re ratio of traffic to sales, but for me, this did not pay when I went to high positions.
In bidding high: I got traffic, did not get sales in proportion to that increased traffic.
Not worth the cost.
However, I've come to accept that GoTo is here to stay and what I am trying to focus on is how to benefit from their system.
Ways that I am planning on capitalizing from them is by bidding or less popular KW phrases, using them to gauge the effectiveness of headlines, titles and descriptions, etc. GoTo can be a very effective source of user data.
And you are right, they are here to stay. If it were not for the potential for bogus clicks, they are ideal in many ways, because you can get KWs from them that you can't get at the majors whose robots and human editors are often downright flaky in what is chosen to display for certain KWs, and what will not be displayed.
But there is something still not right about the proportion of sales to clicks.
