Same competitor taking up 3 spots

[BluBay]

Okay, so over the last 3 weeks I notice my ranking drop and CPC go up, so do a little investigating and I search for my sectors widgets and I see that 3 top five positions are to the same advertiser but with different URLs. . .what do you call this? spam? How do I go about reporting this to adwords? is there an abuse hotline or email?

PS Im in the UK.

[toddb]

Good luck. You can report it and they will take forever to do anything about if they ever do.

[bigtoga]

If you have the budget perhaps driving the price up will force your competitor to either overpay (3x) or stop the process all together?

[briggidere]

it is against the adwords TOS. you are only allowed to promote 1 site for one keyword. they could be affiliates though. if they are not affiliates they must have set up 3 accounts under different users etc to do it.
very naughty

[TJRvanden]

Hi Guys,

I encounter the same problem with one or more competitors and have spoken to google about it, they promised to investigate on this matter and got back to me twice about it, but STILL everyday i see the same stuff happening over and over again and taking screenshots of it.

IMO google does not take down accounts of people that spend good money, no matter if they violate the TOS or not. I have seen this to many times.

Guess the only way to beat them is join em .. :(

[Marketing Guy]

<edited>sorry can't out sites per TOS</edited>

[edited by: skibum at 12:19 am (utc) on Dec. 23, 2005]

[toddb]

I do not understand why they do not respond to this issue. My experience is it better to figure out how to compete as google pretty much ignores it.

[cline]

I've reported many instances of this, in both the UK and the US. Adwords has always taken down the duplicate ads, usually within 48 hours, but occasionally somewhat longer.

Make a clear case. Document everything. Identify the exact search term. Take a screen shot. Identify the exact ads and their landing pages.

[Murdoch]

Your problem will last only as long as your competitor's determination. I've had the same competitor removed 3 times (then again we also spend half a mil on Adwords every year) and every time they have just bought another domain name and did it again. If your competitor has the time to throw up any old site and put it on Adwords, they can and will. It's your job to figure it out and report it. And Google has done a pretty good job for us getting them to take the second one down. But they won't go out of their way to look for it for you. After all, fierce competition = higher CPC = more $$$ for G.

C'est la vie

[Crush]

I guess you buy one set of adwords, you competion buys 3. From a business perspective they spend more than you, so why should google wipe them out? Adapt or die. As murdoch says, maybe start your own "affiliate" program and compete. Business is brutal and you cannot cry because your competition are smarter than you. Spend your time trying to beat them rather than taking thme out.

[BluBay]

So start my own afiliate site eh? Would this be acceptable by googles TOS? If i use a different billing address and credit card, lets say in my partners name who happens to be an affiliate?

[toddb]

Read the TOS on affiliate links. It might less useful to you then you think.

[shorebreak]

What Cline and Murdoch said. That, and realize there's no difference between this and one company owning both Pizza Hut and KFC, or one company owning both Avis & Budget offline. Multiple brand strategies have been around forever.