Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

Questionable Overture Partners

Getting referrals from drugs.com

         

Robino

2:04 pm on Aug 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member





Doesn't it seem strange that Overture supplies general (non-drug related) listings to drugs.com? It's not as if drugs.com is a general search engine.

We've been getting a hand-full of referrals everyday from them. Our site sells industrial (construction) supplies. Nothing that someone would go to drugs.com to locate.

Does anyone else view this as a problem?

Is there anything I can do? I've contacted Over' but they keep brushing me off.

keywordguru

5:03 pm on Aug 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I see your point and have always wondered the same. Overture offers partnership programs to the elite...I think atleast. Not always a benefit to us, rather just to the new partner who will be collecting a percentage.
In your case, I can definitely see why useless charged clicks can easily happen.

That is why I don't always think AdSense is a good idea for us as advertisers. Content matching means money in the webmasters pocket. To me, I just see it too easy for fake clicks. That's why I usually only test these grounds.

bostonseo

6:08 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)



yes turn off content match..easy to do

Robino

7:35 pm on Aug 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member




Content match is off.

Overture justifies this by saying, "drugs.com has a search engine...blah blah blah..."

chungju4

12:21 am on Aug 16, 2004 (gmt 0)



well, no offence, but as someone who makes alot of money from ppc and providing traffic, i think drugs.com would be one of the highest quality partners. definately not shady.

a domain like drugs.com possibly in the top 10 of domains gets thousands of daily type ins. these are natural, not forced or from search engines. this type of traffic is number 1. - the best there is.

ok , they are mostly looking for drugs. but so what. when i type in loans.com i want a loan.

im human, so im also interested in many other things. if i saw a link for car insurance on loans.com that i was interested in and clicked it, would that make loans.com shady? or my traffic low quality?

i dont think so. out of the thousands of daily uniques going to drugs.com , its reasonable to assume some of those people might be interesed in more than 1 thing.

is it unreasonable to assume that a few people who want to buy drugs online also work or are interested in the industrial (construction) supplies industry?

dvduval

1:34 am on Aug 16, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



You say they are a reputable site with lots of type-ins but do a survey of the pages on the site...they have pages optimized for satellite tv, instant messenger, domain names and casinos.

Looking at the bottom of every page, they have light colored text that might be more beneficial to the search engine, not the user.

Brett_Tabke

10:32 am on Aug 16, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



What is the roi of the click throughs coming from them Robino? Is it converting for you?

Robino

1:56 pm on Aug 16, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member





The ROI is non-existent.

Not one sale yet. The visits usually last less than one minute and don't go more than one or (sometimes two) pages deep.

dvduval is right, they have pages optimized for popular terms which are in no way related to prescription drugs.

beren

2:16 pm on Aug 16, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



OH! Yes, I've had the same problem with drugs.com. Contrary to what one of the other posters said, they are NOT a quality affiliate. My biggest client ended up spending thousands of $$ there, even though our site is not about drugs.

I asked Overture to do something about them several times. Finally, about two months ago, the number of clicks from drugs.com dropped by 90%. I don't know if it was because of my complaints (probably not) or the combined complaints of everyone in our industry, or what.

But yes, they are a big exception to the rule that Overture "search" partners are true search sites. They are sort of an equivalent of an Google AdSense site. The difference is that you can prevent your AdWords as from showing up on AdSense sites, but you can't prevent your Overture ads from showing up on drugs.com.

rise2it

1:14 am on Aug 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Paraphrased..."Overture rep brushed me off"

Big Spender? Try telling your rep you're going to cancel your account.

Robino

6:45 pm on Sep 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member




Look at the drugs.com home page. How can this be allowed?

I really wish I could stop my Overture spend. I'm real close to cancelling my accounts.