kanoodle makes me want to scream

[figment88]

When I first setup an account with them, I also had an account with Sprinks. I noticed a lot of my clicks from Sprinks were coming from something called Hotbar. When I investigated, I found that Hotbar was not a search engine at all, but took people on "tours" of keyword-related websites. Since someone just had to click a "next" button Hotbar leads turned out to be crap.

I immediately removed my Sprinks terms that were sent to Hotbar, and when I complained to Kanoodle they said they would stop sending my traffic to Hotbar.

Since then, Sprinks has fallen into disarray, Kanoodle has raised minimim bids for new accounts to $0.05, and Kanoodle has stopped disallowing accounts to block partners. As a result, Kanoodle now seems to be the ppc that provides the top Hotbar results.

How can Kanoodle think it is ok to reverse their policy of blocking partners without notifying their customers?

How can Kanoodle think it is ok to distribute to Hotbar when the bulk of their customers think they are buying search results?

Why does Kanoodle have such a stupid name? I hate telling clients that I setup an account for them.

Well no more. I'm done. :(

[Tropical Island]

It's seems to be obvious from the number of responses to this post that there is not much interest in this PPC. These guys all end up destroying themselves by dealing with disreputable search sources like Hotbar. Just another useless way to seperate us from our money.

[Nieder3d]

The only thing that can be gained from hotbar is small brand recognition. This is not search traffic I agree. Which is what you signed up for.

[figment88]

TroicalIsland that was very well said.

It seems like most of the third tier ppc engines (i.e. all of them below overture, adwords, espotting, and findwhat) chose to build their businesses by getting more money out of the clueless rather than providing true value to businesses.

About keeps trying to fix Sprinks instead of partnering with google or overture. While don't they just admit they don't know the slightest thing about software product development.

Ah-ha keeps releasing and hard-selling one lousy product after another (advantage listings, guaranteed inclusion for excite, etc.). Why don't they just work on increasing and improving the distribution of their listings. Also if their logos really increase ctr's so much why don't they offer them for free like eSpotting. Shouldn't they then benefit from the higher ctr and more intensive bidding.

Kanoodle, I already covered. Hotbar makes me sick.

The only smaller ones I like at this point are:
1)GoClick - I get little traffic from them, but I feel John is a high integrity individual
2) IxQuick - their spotlight seems ok. I like that they try to find new ways to add value for their customers (free logos, stem keywords at no additional cost).

I would be happy to hear others recent experiences with smaller engines that I have less experience with.