Google's "SPONSORED LINK" may signal the start of a DownFall

While the "adwords" were ethical - "Premium Placement" is questionable

[aaaaa]

Google's "SPONSORED LINK" may signal the start of a DownFall

Premium Sponsorships advertising delivers your ad whenever someone searches on the keywords you know are relevant to your product. It is a CPM-priced, full-service premium program that guarantees fixed placement for your ads in one of two enhanced text links appearing at the top of the Google results page

...Reach up to 62.2 million global unique Internet users a month with one buy. (Nielson/NetRatings, September 2002)

[vibgyor79]

While the "adwords" were ethical - "Premium Placement" is questionable

How about justifying your statement?

[bird]

If I remember correctly, then the premium ads were there before the current adwords system.

[Shakil]

Yes, do please justify your comments if you dont mind.

Shak

[fashezee]

[While the "adwords" were ethical. ]

You have been mis-informed.

Problems:

1) Click Fraud - their filter process; what filter process?

2) Inadequate support - their customer service; although human; have all
automated answers to all my questions and do not take common sense into play.

3) Inadequate support cont'd - they should provide the IP addresses that they are billing
for so we can cross reference the data with our log files.

[clearvision]

I found a click tracking verifier that shows the ip addresses of who clicked... why can't Google do that?

[aaaaa]

Here's an example of a search that has BOTH
"Sponso red Link(s)"

"Adwords" and

the regular top - first page search results.

"Sponsored Link" is not as ethical an alternative - while "adwords" do offer the potential to get a valid site noticed to compete - BEFORE - the hard road to "link popularity" and "popularity of links" can be accomplished
for a successful placement on GOOGLE and it's partners.

[edited by: agerhart at 7:29 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2003]
[edit reason] No URLs, No specifics [/edit]

[Marc_P]

I use adwords and premium for a combined value of 10,000$ US every month. Not millions of dollars, but enough to tell you that Google has problems in the service department - they are severely understaffed, so I was told off the record by me rep and my account manager.

However, for adwords, if you politely tell them you disagree with their editorial decision and why you do, a human being will always reply to you. I know cause I do it every week.

And they ususally side with me and allow my all caps, or whatever I needed, because there is justification for it.

[aaaaa]

An excellent method that has worked for many many people is the following:

if the url for your main site is for example:
[?.com...]

use the adwords and sponsored link as follows:

for Google:

[?.com...] or [?.com...]

for Overture:

[?.com...] or "anyword"

for looksmart:

[?.com...] or "anyword"

in the case of google and overture the sponsored links will not count towards link popularity - so you can add a "counter/tracker" and/or both server-side or client-side stats to each individual page.

using thefollowing html:

<base href="http://www.?.com/">

will make all of the resulting page views default to your regular home directory AFTER the initial entry to your site.

you can even add a "bookmark this page" option for the NEW directory or your regular home page - so that visitors can return again - without having to re-visit the search engines and "click" to your site.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Google "sponsored link(s)" ALSO appear(s) on their directory as well - this is analagous to DMOZ selling the top 2 spots on their site ranking results.

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Lycos and HotBot has a "Lycos InSite™ AdBuyer" similar to Google's adwords, as well as "Sponsored Links" similar to Google's that take the first THREE spots on a given search.