These type of sites are nothing but an excuse to make money through Adsense at the costs of the Adwords advertiser.
The Adsense guy loves it and Google also is a winner in this situation.
I've finally decided to e-mail Google about this and I'm waiting for the reply.
I also decided to stop my campaigns where I see this kind of abbuse.
What are your thoughts about this?
I've given up caring, and I just focus on my bottom line. It's like click fraud - just a cost of doing business online. I make tons of extra money because of Google, so I can't really complain all that much.
Google is becoming the next Microsoft ... and I don't think anyone important cares, because all the founders and key people are all billionaires now LOL
We need to be demanding an exclusion list for
the search network also. They now have one for
the content network, there is no reason they
can't give us one for the search network also.
Yes. Agreed 100%. An exclusion list for content network was a good gesture from Google, but it's those search affiliates that really get me mad.
I agree 110%. I emailed them awhile ago about one particular site that was sending me tons of bogus clicks, and they didn't even reply. I can only assume that they allow it because they know they can get away with it, and they make tons of extra money off of it.
Have they got back to you yet?
For example (not the real search term), if you look up "foo restaurant in timbuktu" you might see a real listing for "Foo Restaurant, Timbuktu" then a listing for the rip-off site using the exact same description, but if you click there are only AdWords for "foo widgets" -- nothing to do with any "restaurant."
And so on; an additional search for "foo state park" or "foo bug zapper" or other high-ranking sites containing "foo" and there is a legit site listing plus a false site listing not far behind, both using the same description.
I used the Google spam form to report them, I'll be interested to see what Google does about it since they are essentially rewarding an affiliate for abusing their search engine, in this case.
"
<email snipped>.
"
So, it seems that there will be in the near future also the possibility to choose the individual sites also for the search network.
[edited by: eWhisper at 10:18 pm (utc) on May 17, 2005]
[edit reason] No email snippets. Please read TOS. [/edit]
So, it seems that there will be in the near future also the possibility to choose the individual sites also for the search network.
Based on all that I now of Site-Targeted ads, which you appear to be referring to, this is not actually correct.
Here is some info, quoted from the AdWords Help Center (bolding mine):
Site-targeted campaigns are a new enhancement to Google AdWords. Site targeting lets advertisers choose individual sites in the Google content network where they'd like their ads to appear. AdWords advertisers will be able to target keywords (as they do now) or target individual sites, depending on their advertising goals.Site targeting is not available yet. We're beta-testing the system now with a small number of advertisers, and we expect to make site targeting available to all AdWords advertisers in the near future.
Quoted from:
What is site targeting?
[adwords.google.com...]
Again, please know that your feedback on this subject has been passed on.
AWA
I am sorry for posting the complete E-mail, didn't know it was against the rules... my mistake.
Going on topic, I must say that by reading the e-mail sent from GG's support person I became convinced that in the future it will be possible to chose in which sites we want our ads to run even in the Search Network.
That was explicit when it was written "We hope to make site targeting available to all AdWords advertisers in the
near future."
Anyway, it's good to know that Google people is informed about our worries and problems, I think it's the first step to solve them.
I assumed that site-targeting was available to all users right now, which is not.
So it was my mistake again, sorry about that.
