over the last few weeks I've noticed more and more of my adword referrals are originating from one specific domain (an online mapping service).
Click throughs from this domain never convert, and I really do mean never. At this point upto 40% of my budget is paying for this useless traffic.
Is there anyway of stopping my Ads appearing on this domain? I've tried these negative keywords:
-www.UselessTraffic.com
-http://www.UselessTraffic.com
-UselessTraffic.com
-UselessTraffic
-maps
-mapping
(btw useless traffic is a made up domain to illustrate my examples)
None of the above seems to work.
I dont want to loose the other search partner or network traffic as it performs well enough to be profitiable (once the useless traffic is removed).
Any advice would be really appreciated, I'm getting to the stage where I'm going to have to restrict my Ads to Google only if I can't sort this out.
Many Thanks
Oh, and welcome to Webmasterworld :)
Seems to me they are playing a game:
If you go to Netscape dot com, and then click on News, or Money, or a couple of other navigation links, you'll see a Web Offers box, or something similar in the top Right or at the Bottom. The box offers various popular keywords, and when any of them are clicked on, the following page brings it up as if you have searched for that term on the Netscape engine (which you have not) - AND the results are ALL SPONSORED LINKS from Google. So no non-sponsored results even appear anywhere (which would not be the case if you actually did a search from the Netscape site).
Needless to say, the keywords in the Web Offers box are not relevant (as far as I can see) to the page, and a lot of people who never intended to search for the term, end up clinking on the term, and then on the sponsored links, driving up my, and maybe your adwords spending.
The thing that sucks is that they play it off like a user search, which it is not. Netscape is a search partner, which we cannot opt out of without opting out of the entire search partner network. Even having your ads on Adsense is better that this because, at least, there, the page is somewhat relevant.
But seems to me that what Netscape(and maybe others) are doing in this case is misleading at best: I think they are taking general traffic, and trying to force-funnel it to specific searches. Its no wonder that this rope-a-dope traffic does not convert.
Google: please take a look. You claim that "Regardless of where your Google AdWords ads appear, they are always text-based, relevant, and unobtrusive . . ." Please fix this problems or explain how these junk searches are relevant.
over the last few weeks I've noticed more and more of my adword referrals are originating from one specific domain (an online mapping service).Click throughs from this domain never convert, and I really do mean never. At this point upto 40% of my budget is paying for this useless traffic.
Widey, any chance you could write to AdWords support using the 'Contact Us' link on any page of your account, and provide some details about the site in question? If you do write, please put "Attention AdWordsAdvisor" in the subject line.
The "Never converts..." detail bothers me a bit, and I'd like to have some folks take a look. Do you mean never, as in zero conversions?
BTW, since you're new to the forum, I should explain that I'm an employee of AdWords, posting here with the blessings of the site owner, and moderators. Been posting daily for the past 6 months or so.
Thanks!
AWA
Yeah I see a whole lot of the same thing for search partners like Netscape -- all useless traffic, and significantly driving up our Adwords bill...Google: please take a look....
Thanks for your detailed post, ianama. We'll take a look into this.
AWA
AWA I've sent a message from my adwords account so if you can work some of that Google voodoo I'd be thrilled.
Thanks All
Widey
Google Voodoo, I cannot promise! ;) But we'll certainly take a look around.
Thanks again.
AWA
I look forward to a better search network, and to receiving the quality traffic/leads that we've come to expect from Google.
To quote Google Ads are "precisely targeted to the content page based on the associated keywords". Utter nonsense!
Based on Googles current performance, if I run a banana shop in New York then my Ads are relevent to:
-people looking at the weather in New York
-people viewing maps of New York
Now I'm sure viewers of these (mapping/weather/etc)sites will want Bananas at some point but it happens so infrequently that I dont want to be paying the same amount for this junk traffic as I pay for the real targetted traffic i.e. people who go to Google and search for "Buy Bananas in New York", "New York Bananas".
Please Google, make sure your targetted traffic is actually targetted or give us a way to opt-out of some of your "Quality Network of Sites".
It's actually loosing Google money because I'm reducing my bids to the point where they dont show on the Mapping/Weather sites.
PS AWA I did send a message via my Adword account with "Attention AdWordsAdvisor" in the title, and got a lovely boilerplate response from Adwords UK :'(
If Google wants people to have faith in content distribution, they should
1) stop force funneling such as found as netscape
2) cease their parked domain program
3) stop major sites from having tags right below adwords that say "Please click on our sponsors - your clicks generate donations" such as found at care2
4) put in some standards for websites added to the program
If so any hints as to how to go about it would be much appreciated.
PS AWA I did send a message via my Adword account with "Attention AdWordsAdvisor" in the title, and got a lovely boilerplate response from Adwords UK :'(
Sorry Widey - I actually didn't see your post #9 until this morning.
I wasn't able to find your email - and of course it turns out this was because it had arrived in the UK office, where I had not alerted Customer Service folks to forward it to me.
However, I have it in hand now.
Delivering targeted traffic is an extremely high priority for us, and I wanted to run your email past the right folks here. They have seen this thread already.
To set the right expectations, please know that I can't affect short-term change in this particular instance, nor can I promise the ability to opt-out of particular partner sites.
I can promise, however, to pass on the feedback from this thread, as well as Widey's particular info, to people who are deeply involved with the quality of the traffic being delivered to our advertisers.
You may consider that done. :)
AWA
In the mean I guess I'll stick to bids low enough to miss out on the netowrk traffic :-(
Delivering targeted traffic is an extremely high priority for us...
In that case, try the formula:
(targeted keywords) + (targeted audiences) = (targeted traffic)
The Netscape thing is a big issue for us too. We have one client that got 320 clicks for one keyword in one day, and on most other days the same keyword would get less than 5 clicks, and all are from Netscape and although a few converted, the ROI was sad, verging on despair.
Options open are to raise the issue with Adwords, which we will do when we have a meeting with our rep on Wednesday, or to remove syndication.
Clearly, Netscape is AOL so and I am seeing a lot of AIM Search results where there seems to be a fair degree of cherry picking going on with the selection.
As an advertiser we are keen to buy into the entire network, but we have opted out of content syndication completely and may well opt purely for Google traffic only unless improvement is seen in the quality of delivery from ALL syndication partners.
I've been going through my referrals for the last couple of weeks and on somedays over 60% of my traffic comes from a mapping site, other days over 25% of my traffic coming from a weather site.
Widey - Is that 60% of total AdWords traffic that is coming from a mapping site?
If it is, it sounds like it may be best to put the content syndication on hold for a while, assuming it is in the content network and not search.
from my experiments with excluding Partner and/or content traffic it would appear that these particular mapping/weatcher sites are Search Partners.
I dont really want to loose the seacrh partner traffic unless I really have to as some of it converts quite well. I't just these 2 specific sites causing me untold grief/expense.
And yes, on somedays some of my sites get well over half of their traffic from these 2 specific sites.
:'(
I've been forwarding the specific comments posted in this thread (as well as in the email from Widey) to the appropriate team here at Google. I've also sent the link to the entire thread itself, of course.
I can say, with assurance, that your comments are being taken seriously - and are being looked into & worked on.
AWA
1) force funneling ads as "search results" let alone content ads should put publishers on hold no matter how large they are.
2) publishers who encourage ad clicking by claiming they are donations should be booted from the program no matter how large they are.
3) Google should immediately stop distribution to parked domains. If Google wants to distribute to parked domains, fine, but set it up as opt-in with a separate bidding market.
4) Google should begin considering offering credits and refunds to advertisers who have suffered costs due to these system abuses.
I make a fair number of controversial posts, but I think just about all advertisers would agree with me here.
I just checked todays stats and again for one of my web sites over 50% of my referrals are from that one particular mapping site.
I'm really at my whits end here, over 50% of my advertising spend for that site is straight down the toilet......again! :'(
HEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPP
Widey
