I've reported a violation of the redirect rule twice. Two weeks, and it is still up.
Absolutely clear. Redirect to a URL which is a different domain than the display URL and not under common ownership. (The display URL belongs to an affiliate, the destination URL to the merchant with the affiliate program). AND the display URL is a 400 error when typed-in to a browser.
Have at it. Anything goes.
Have at it. Anything goes.
Not true. Noticed the same false URL thing about a competitor and reported but Google does nothing.
Tried to do the same thing and immediately got reviewed and disapproved. Go figure...
In this case, I don't think the advertiser is spending a lot of money. But, who knows? Could be a managed account, and the manager could be doing big business with Google.
Honest advertisers don't need to or care to pay for your tests.
Israel
I hope we're savvy enough not to be clicking on ads looking for cheats. At least do a right click on the destination and parse out the URL for your "policing".
1. Open notepad.
2. In Firefox, context-click, "copy link location"
3. Paste to notepad
4. Examine URL. If suspicous, or just wanting to examine landing page, copy the destination url (after &adurl= or &q=, seems to vary. In any case, always the "tail" of the Google URL) and paste back into a URL bar.
A Firefox extension would be handy, and not terribly difficult to write.
I'd think honest advertisers would appreciate the "policing". Every illigitimate slot that goes away benefits everybody who is left.
BTW, I've noticed the Froogle-stuffing that's been going on by affiliates lately. Clearly against the rules, and hurts affiliates who are playing by the rules. Froogle doesn't allow affiliates, period.
1. Open notepad.
etc.
Alternately, check out the Firefox extension, "Split Link".
It's a general-purpose Link-spiltter. It will find embedded URLs inside of a link.
Context-click on a link, select "split Link" from the menu.
You get a popup that shows two URLs each for "unformatted" and "formatted". The "reformatted" removes any parameters after a?
Click on the advertiser's URL under "reformatted" to go directly to the advertiser website, and avoid hitting Google stats.
This won't always work, because sometimes the advertiser's site will need some parameter after a?. And you can't click on the "unformatted" links for some reason. Not sure exactly what the author had in mind here.
Still, a useful took for checking for abuse and also handy for checking your own ads without costing yourself money.
This won't always work, because sometimes the advertiser's site will need some parameter after a?.
It will always work if you grab what lies past the AdWords routing, including encoded characters and params. Copy it then paste it over some text in "Hyperlink Properties" in Front Page (or perhaps the equivalent in other IDES).
That will preserve all parameters and convert encoded characters, etc that you couldn't simply paste in a browser's address bar and still reach the advertiser's page.
Keep a page called 'test.htm' just for that purpose. This will always replicate what happens when the ad gets clicked in Google. Of course, run 'test.htm' in your browser and then click the link from there.
Israel
In internet explorer, you can just right click the ad and press properties. Next to Address (URL) it looks like it only shows part of the full url. Start highlighting it from the beginning and DRAG DOWN, this will let you scroll down to view the rest of the Adwords URL. Scroll down until you see the SECOND http:// - Simply highlight the url and copy and paste it into your browser.
The process takes maybe 7-10 seconds.
I asked them to explain why the rule didn't apply to everyone, but I guess I don't expect a response. (Or I expect a standard, form-letter response that makes it seem as though no one ever read my message in the first place.)
~sigh~
Not to come down on Google, but this kind of thing is very frustrating to me. I wish they'd just come out and say something like, "If you do X, Y, and Z, we will make an exception to this rule for you" instead of pretending that the rules apply to everyone but only selectively enforcing them.
(And no, I don't think it's a matter of "they haven't gotten to it yet and they're going to shut them off soon" since a couple of these violators have been doing it for over a year.)
JK
Why all that?
Because computer people can "never see the forest for the trees". That's a universal techie maxim!
Israel
did inform our rep (but at present I guess they are all in the US, party). best thing to do is to add WHOis records. a good WHOis summary can be gained at <snip> (incl. screenshots of URL's).
even so we sent WHOis records, it still takes days for google to act.
should be faster.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 10:12 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] please, we don't do spam reports - take it up with Google [/edit]
I asked them to explain why the rule didn't apply to everyone, but I guess I don't expect a response.
Don't ask Google for an exception - ask the trademark holder. Some trademark holders do grant exceptions (many don't).
This was send to us over 2 weeks ago by adwords:
"<email excerpt removed>
Last week after numerous emails i send i received this:
<email excerpt removed>
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:45 am (utc) on Jan. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] Please don't paste private emails, See TOS. [/edit]
We decided that the current system was not working very well. So I wrote a very detailed letter showing how I had complained about a specific ad 8 times since 8/1/2005. The infraction is obvious to anyone who has an adwords campaign. I was not asking them to do anything more then check the ad and make the person fix it.
It usually takes me 3 to 4 emails to get action on this type of thing. We are reviewing their ads for free. Yes, we have self interest but we are still doing work for them. Respect us and at least respond:
a) Google does not want your help. We will continue to have 2 standards.
b) Thanks, we will ask the person to fix the infraction.
Seriously, I think A is out of the question. I am more proactive then that. :) So come on Google see it my way and help me out.
/end rant
PS: My rep has repeated said Google favors A. I am not hitting a brick wall repeatedly with zero encouragement.
Our relief did not last long. Now afternoon, spammers are back. Double ads (now) under new domains show again. Looks like this is orchestrated by a major Australian (online) travel company. Since January this year, all double ads point to the same company.
The real problem here is that these double ads (for each destinations 3-4), as covering all the top spots, locking out normal advertisers. Google visitors are not happy as all domains forwarding to the same site/brand. Advertiser are very unhappy as revenues are dropping. At the same time this blocks of double ads drive up the CTR.
google, please fix this.
How can my ad go from number 1 spot to second page to number 2 to number 5 etc all within 48 hours. Tough keeping track of things this way
one could call it 'ad high jack'. This seriously questions google integrity.
same spammer covers nearly all spots now for 'china hotels'.. rome hotels, paris hotels, london hotels, dubai hotels etc...
pretty much spamming (double bidding) on a global scale. google should pay attention to this and I am very surprised that so far they have not caught on to this.
Somebody's got Google looking the other way.
IT IS SHOCKING AND APPALLING THAT GOOGLE ALLOWS THIS TO GO ON.
I haven't been able to see your problem myself. What geographical area are you targeting? I'm probably not seeing the same ads that you are.
Probbly doing some sort of cloaking
Cloaking should get caught at review time. If the reviewer saw that the landing page was the same as from other ads for the same keywords, it would get rejected. If it was cloaked, there would be nothing to the reviewing employee using an anonymous proxy service that prevents the site from knowing the true originating IP. Shoot, there are free ones on the web that would work just fine!
My point is this: sure, there are some technical issues involved, but Google has some of the greatest minds in the industry working for them, and they haven't solved the problem.
There's got to be a reason why.
pretty blatant. plus the display url is kw.kw.kw.kw, there's not even a tld extention
Edit: I do have a similar problem and the person just keeps coming back with multiple accounts attacking the same words. Google appears to have no way to combat this.
