Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings, post your review!

Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings Reviews

[VanHelsing]

Have you tried Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings, if so, please paste your comment here. Let us all know if your traffic was good or bad.

[ScottG13]

Just started it yesterday. Some cruddy mechanism and right now it's showing both Ask and AdWord's ads so we're there twice.

I tried to call, but they do not list a CS number.

Finally found one and I couldn't actually speak with a CS person.

Pretty horrible CS. Hopefully, they will generate some conversions, but I don't want to sink too much time into them if their CS is this flaking and difficult to contact.

[1Lit]

Minimum bid is not 5 cents as they advertise. It is high for popular search terms e.g. for some telecoms terms = $1.50.

Kind of sucks as they don't mention this. They shouldn't insist on high minimum bids for popular search terms but, then again, Google Adwords is going this way as well :(

Pretty soon only the big boys will have enough $$$s for PPC advertising. Not many people can afford over a dollar a click which AJ insists on for popular search terms.

[bmsd33]

I've started 2 different campaigns to test for myself and 1 client. So far, I am concerned about this program. I've e-mailed them several times and have not gotten any type of response over 4 days. I could find no phone number to call. The one ad for my client that appears to be set up properly doesn't show up for the term sponsored, although our Adwords ad does. The CPC required for top positions for this term seems pretty high, too. I added 2 new search terms/ads for this client and I do not see any indication in their control panel they have been received and are waiting for approval. No e-mails from Ask, either.

For my company, my ads do appear in the #1 position but I only see 1 click in the 2 weeks they've been running. They are low volume terms, but I thought I'd see more than 1 click over 4 #1 terms/positions over 2 weeks. What little reporting I have to go on doesn't give much info compared to Adwords or Yahoo.

I'd like to cancel and get my money back at this point, but I'd also like to see if I could get some customer service feedback to find out if I am doing something wrong or this is the state of the program. My advice is to use Adwords for now and wait and see.

[Import Export]

So far so good. No complaints at this moment..

[bmsd33]

Had to cancel both test accounts. I had to call Ask corporate and try twice to get to a live person. Turns out they are, at this time, only selling the #1 position, at least to the small guys. Any ads for #2, even though it appears you can bid on them, simply don't appear. They don't tell you this when you sign up or anywhere in the campaign set up process. They also have such a large backlog of e-mails to answer, there's no telling how long it will be to get an answer. Of course, they have no customer service phone number and when I called corporate the first time I was put through to a recording which directed me to the web site ("for fastest response...") to fill out a form. So, unless you can afford their high CPCs for the #1 spot, I'd stick with AdWords, which show up up from #2 on. This program is not ready for the general public.

[1Lit]

Complete waste of time. We'd like to close down our account, but they haven't responded to a single one of our emails. Ah well, we'll just have to wait for our credit to run out...

I know what I'd like to do to Jeeves if I get hold of him :o

[ScottG13]

Having a smiliar experience. They are not ready to run this live. They have no customer support. I've called and left a message as well as filled out a form. I'm not adding any more campaigns till I get some explanations. They need to observe the caution and calculation MS is using going in to their PPC adveture and take some notes.

At least they aren't frauding us to deathl like Kanoodle and the like, but they certainly aren't worth bothering with if they aren't actually employing people in this dept to answer customer inquiries.

[beavis]

Very negative experience so far. Not a single click in two days. Incredibly, they are billing me $15 for every 50 keywords, just to get started!

[DeckIS]

Traffic has been pretty slow since they switched over to their own sponsored listings. My rep sent me an email stating we needed to expand our keyword list in order to gain more traffic for our core keywords due to the way their system matches queries with listings. I expanded our list and havent seen any increase.

We did have some issues with click fraud from some of their network partners.

[ddogg]

It was a mistake for them to launch their own system. They will never create anything even close to what they were already using (AdWords). Personally I don't even want to waste my time creating/managing campaigns for such low-traffic sites anyway.

[robertskelton]

Their traffic estimator (which determines how much $$ you need to deposit) is way off. It meant I had to deposit $60 to cover a month of estimated clicks and a week later there have been no clicks at all.

So now I have to think of some extremely generic terms to waste the $60 on, before they take out the $25 a month minimum spend....

I feel ripped off!

[bmsd33]

robertskelton

I think you can cancel it and get a refund. I did.

[figment88]

They also seem to syndicate listings to some really lousy sites - which is where I seem to be getting about 2/3 of the meager traffic.

I'm tracking form information requests which I get about 8% conversion from google/overture. So far, from Ask Jeeves ~35 clicks no converts.

Getting rid of all my high priced bids today.

[bnhall]

same as looksmart - poor ROI - clumsy interface

[GameMasterM]

" They also seem to syndicate listings to some really lousy sites - which is where I seem to be getting about 2/3 of the meager traffic."

That is an interesting comment. They have not changed their syndication channels and if they have then they dragged the AdWords with them. That would alter the ROI on the Adwords on ASK too correct? Does this mean AdWords on ASK are poor performers for advertisers?

[beavis]

I asked to cancel my account today. AJ never should have started this program. It is terrible. Poorly designed and no traffic.

[bnhall]

I also cancelled and received a refund.

[barney]

did they refund to credit card or mail a check of refund?

[bnhall]

refund to cc

[barney]

is there time limit when u can get refund

[foozhitao]

I only bid on a few keywords and it's done well. We show up twice which means my competitors don't:) CS sucks! but as long as it keeps converting I'll keep doing it (I'll be keeping a close eye on it and have no plans to do much work there!).