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They have started to take over my GoTo refers and I feel they are sending less than targeted clicks to my sites.
Has anyone else seen this obscure group of sites move up in your logs?
Bottom line is that my GoTo costs have gone up marginally but my sales have not.
P.S.
I have voiced my concern with GoTo about this new partner. They say - they have tested them and they are OK for the user and advertiser.
If you have any experiences please post. I hope I am not the only squeaky wheel on this one.
minnapple
I have not received ANY [apps5.oingo.com...] click throughs on search terms under .17 - even if they are well positioned and receive a volume of GoTo click throughs.
In response I have lowered my bids on the terms attracting [apps5.oingo.com...] clicks.
In the future any GoTo term that attracts [apps5.oingo.com...] will be reduced until that traffic stops or the term will be deleted.
IMHO they are not a quality "partner" and I will not pay for their traffic.
I should add that 75% of the click throughs on these +.17 terms are from [apps5.oingo.com...] . smells
Costs have gone down 200% sales have gone down 15%.
NOW, THIS IS ON a selected keyword/product.
Man, I can't believe that anyone else has not seen this!
Are you guys sleeping?
they claim to be a content repackaging company (ie. "make the invisible web visible" and "linguistically accurate searches" or whatever) but there's no obvious tie-in to the oingo.com search engine or any "app5".
i dont know about you, but that all reads like an SEO company to me, with a pretty polish. why does that matter? because, like it or not, we SEOs do have the ability to "use our power for the forces of both good and evil"...
i've been watching this referrer this month as well, and i'm suspicious too. a lot of clicks (a few thousand so far) across several client domains for a variety of keywords...
whenever i see something like this it begs the core question: where is apps5.oingo.com getting ITS traffic from? if i can find a legitmate answer to that question, i cool off a bit.
in this case, the oingo.com domain clearly isnt generating the traffic - search results are supplies by AV and ODP - and there's no obvious external application to download, which may be powering it (think Gator, or whatever).
sooooo... this looks clearly suspicious to me.
i think i'll mine my logs for culprit clicks and pass them on to GoTo for inspection. others might want to do the same.
it might be a good idea, perhaps, to have a "Watch Site" or "Watch Board" dedicated to these types of things, so we can colletively flag questionable traffic.... otherwise, bare minimum, we should flag them here like minnapple did...
seoboy
What bid range are you seeing click throughs on?
Perhaps these guys are leading people to their PPC clone site through optimization of listing that have high click through costs.
I have seen their site/s come when researching keywords.
minnapple
While looking at what was on domains similar to mine, I was redirected to [snip - site has adult exit console]
If you click on any of the category links another window opens with this address: [apps5.oingo.com...] with the category chosen replacing the second keyword in the address.
I hope this information will be useful to you guys.
(edited by: Mike_Mackin at 10:07 am (gmt) on Oct. 17, 2001
check out [sneaks.com...]
stumbled across this tonight. basically, its a domain that was bought and is being squatted on. rather than getting a 404 or an "under construction" message, the page placeholder is a generic search portal. type in a search, and you get results powered by - you got it - oingo. this isn't really anything new, it just threw me for a loop because i wasnt really paying attention to my referrers, initially. duh. but that "domainpark" part in the URL string was the giveaway for me, once i woke up and saw it...
minnapple - to answer your question, most of the clicks ARE on semi-competitive keywords, but i think that could be a coincidence. in my logs, the oingo traffic is coming from several locations - the keywords just happen to be pretty popular keywords.
there are several domains that generate more traffic than others (i can separate out the "domains" by the "partner=" string in the URL), but most likely those are sites where the domain squatters are sitting on keyword-related domains, so inexperienced web users type in the keyword directly into the "Address" bar of their browser and basically end up at the squatter's website. then they probably try typing the same keyword in again, and get the oingo search results in question, then click through and leave the oingo referrer behind.
the bummer, of course, is that there's no way to know what the ORIGINAL referrer was...which still makes the results somewhat sketchy, in my book... the only real test for "legit" vs. fraud would be to tag and watch conversions for these specific oingo visitors.
i'd be interested to learn the results, if anyone does this. if it becomes a traffic problem i may do so myself; if i do i'll share the results...
seoboy
as an experiment, i may tag the oingo-specific traffic keywords with unique tracking codes and see what happens over the next week, conversion-wise. if it turns out that we get none, then it will certainly build the case for these being "bogus" clicks. perhaps others should do the same and we can share notes here...
but first, here's what i suggest. if your keyword is a simple 1 or 2 word phrase, try typing it in to your browser like www.keyword.com. if its a commonly mispelled word, try typing in the mispelling. see if you dont end up with a page that reads "Try Searching These Related Categories" with a list of popular, related keyword searches, and a search box at the bottom. Click on the keyword listed, that matches the one you typed in to the browser. You should get a list of search results - the top 15 GoTo search results to be exact. see if your site - the one getting the clicks - is listed there. my guess is that it is. that is what i am discovering for many of the domains i investigate. that is where the clicks are coming from - notice the referrer string in the browser, on the search results page. if it matches the one you are seeing in your logs, voila!
seoboy
