Google Admits To Overcharging For Adwords

How many billions do they owe their advertisers?

[superclown2]

During their recent trial Google employees admitted to 'adjusting' bids on Adwords, which resulted in them making a lot more money at the expense of their customers, who were over-paying for their clicks. The US Government sued them and rather than have it go to trial (which coincidentally could have meant a lot of publicity) They sent a cheque for three times the sum claimed, saying that that should be the end of the matter.

Now then: what about the millions of other customers whose bills they 'adjusted' in the same way? Will their cheques be in the post perhaps?

You can see a copy of the alleged cheque here: [thebignewsletter.com ]

[CommandDork]

Man, Google has really lost its way.

[superclown2]

I'm a simple man, and probably wrong, but: in the USA isn't this sort of thing illegal? Like criminal?

Like I said I'm a simple man and probably wrong. I do know though that here in London the fraud squad would be asking some very pertinent questions; particularly in view of the massive sums involved. Let's look at the facts:

1) Employees admitted in court that they "padded the bills".
2) When they were taken to court over this by a single customer (like: The US Government) who has the money to prosecute them, they folded right away.

So, again: Where are the cheques for the millions of other customers who were similarly affected by this, no doubt, 'accounting error'? Some very big companies out there lost heavy sums.

[Shepherd]

Since were never going to use google ads again anyway we might as well make them try and collect on our latest invoices just to take it to court... might be fun.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:05 am (utc) on May 21, 2024]
[edit reason] fixed typo [/edit]

[Beachboy]

I quit buying AdWords years ago.

[ember]

After they completely ignored my maximum bid in a campaign and would not pause said campaign for hours, I quit using them. That was a couple of years ago or so, and I haven't looked back or missed them. They're a different company than they were 20 years ago.

[Shepherd]

Google said that after months of discovery, the Justice Department could only point to estimated damages of less than $1 million.

Nice try google, the Justice Department hasn't asked me yet, I bet they haven't queried A LOT of people. google knows this one has a lot of potential pain.

I'm available anytime for deposition, have a ton of saved messages and screenshots documenting google's absolute lack of remorse for their blatant thievery.

Also, this is nothing new. google has been a thief since DAY ONE, just ask Overture how google does no evil...

[Mark_A]

Hmm, might explain some of the odd high click charges I have experienced, and on which Google wouldn't comment or refund!

[superclown2]

Hmm, might explain some of the odd high click charges I have experienced, and on which Google wouldn't comment or refund!

Did you place a limit on what you would pay for a click, and was it exceeded?

[Mark_A]

Did you place a limit on what you would pay for a click, and was it exceeded?

Yes, I put a max CPC value into the system and Google completely ignored it.

[superclown2]

Yes, I put a max CPC value into the system and Google completely ignored it.

I see you're from the UK. Have you complained to [tradingstandards.uk ]Trading Standards? Friends of mine swear by them. It wouldn't hurt if you gave them the full story of what G's been up to either.

[Mark_A]

Hi superclown2 Trading Standards is an idea certainly, I hadn't thought of that. Could muddy the relations I have with Google though, at the moment I do want to continue with CPC ads with them. However I guess they are trading on that.

[superclown2]

Could muddy the relations I have with Google though,

If they are taking extra money from you and refusing to discuss it I would think the water is well muddied already.

It's like the school bully; no-one will fight back until all of a sudden they all do and a mob descends.

I've sued several big companies in my time (the Small Claims Court is wonderful - cheap, informal, and next to no legal costs) and I've won them all - in most cases (like Google, with the US Government) the companies concerned have settled up before the hearing in order to avoid the bad publicity.

In most instances my relationships with the companies involved have continued undisturbed and I still do business with some of them decades later. They don't try to cheat me anymore though.

[Mark_A]

I have to balance what I want to do with what is best for my employer. Google still brings in more relevant enquiries than Bing and others, relevant enquiries drive the business. That Google has been making it harder to enjoy the process is a pain for me as an individual, but my colleagues only see the enquiries - which they want more of.

[Kendo]

Is Chrome still double tapping every page?

[Mark_A]

Is Chrome still double tapping every page?

What?

[blend27]

I've recently opened G-Ads account for one of my clients and was contacted by Ad Team member to help me setup the campaign.

Last time I used their Adwords system was in 2004 for one of my own websites.

So I let them. Oh boy.....

The site is for a small insurance agency. We asked to advertise in one specific US State for terms based on content of website in question.

Clicks generated were mostly between 6-10 USD, most for search terms that have nothing to do with location where we want to advertise. 3-4 states away from where the client is.

Some were completely ridiculous, some people were searching for an address of a Major Insurance company 350 miles away - $9.52.

One caught my eye $5.67 for a single word - "IHop". What does Ihop(pancake joint) have to do with Auto Insurance?

By the time I started figuring out whats/where this Google Optimized campaign ripped thru 600+ USD in 3 days.

So I stopped it. Compared the amount of time these generated clicks spent on the site based on actual site logs. 95% never went passed the landing page.

I asked the person who is answering phones at the clients company if there was an uptick in calls - NO. There were no leads generated via contact form, no leads generated via an email address on the website. Zilch.

Contacted the person who set it up at Google. 4 days later got an email completely ignoring my question but asking me when will I restart that campaign.

I think I will need to spend next couple of weeks, months trying to learn the way Google Ads system(it is a monster in size) works before trying to engage again.

Definitely feel cheated here... :(

[superclown2]

Compared the amount of time these generated clicks spent on the site based on actual site logs. 95% never went passed the landing page.

Bots.

Before I gave up feeding any more money to Google I had a massive IP exclusion list - the worst were from educational establishments where the young script kiddies were no doubt honing their hacking skills. It cost me megabucks to refine that list which I could only add to after I'd been charged for another 'bounce-out' click that came regularly from the same IP address with the same time gap between them.

Let's be realistic; setting up a system to click on google ads and send them via proxies is hardly rocket science but all the time this was happening their representative completely ignored the evidence I sent in and I was still charged.

My companies will never again send a single penny to Google.

[Shepherd]

It is truly disgusting the things google has gotten away with on the ads side and especially the lack of recurse we have outside of court. They have no interest in provided a better product, only thievery...

[blend27]

Bots.

Excellent point.

Question of the Day: Is the advertiser's account still charged for a fake/bot click when the destination server issues a 403 or there is no response at all?

I know that there is GTAG script supposed to load(beam to G) when the user arrives at the destination URI...

Fact of Life: I have never been to IHop in my life, so far...

[Mark_A]

I don't like what I am seeing.

[superclown2]

Clicks are well down but CPC is very up so budget is still spent.

It'll get worse as September approaches, and the US government's bid to break up the company takes off. If you need to know how they are manipulating prices it's all in the recent court transcripts, all of which are available here [thecapitolforum.com ]

[Kendo]

I had been complaining about their fictional ad billing and phoney bid estimates for yonks and no-one ever believed me.

Seeing a recommendation to increase a bid to 65 cents/click to get an ad on the first page of results was commonplace. It was also common to see a recommendation to bid $6.50/click.

But when one searched for those keywords, no ads were ever found... no-one was paying anything!

And for all the money that we ever paid for ads. we never once saw our ads in search results.

[Shepherd]

To be fair, google can charge whatever they want for advertising on their site.

Problem is, google got greedy.
They should be required to be transparent in their pricing. They are not.
Everyone should have the same opportunity at available pricing. They do not.
google lies about the customer's ability to control advertising costs with Daily Budget, Target CPAs, and others. google will blow through/past your daily budget* EVERY TIME, you will never see your Target CPA hit, all lies and blatant thievery.


*yes, they say "For the month, you'll never pay more than your daily budget times the average number of days in a month. Some days you might spend less than your daily budget, and on others you might spend up to twice as much." Real world: you set up a daily budget of $1,000, $30,000/month. google will spend $2,000 - $3,000 a day for the first 10 days so they get their max money, if you keep the campaign going they stop sending traffic, if you shut it down early they still get the monthly avg (max money)

[mhansen]

No doubt they are killing their own systems. I manage ads for a SaaS company and we have consistently run a "Branding" campaign with exact match targets on the company name and it's variations for several years. MAX CPC for these is generally in the $1-$2 range and never more than $3 for an [exact] brand name match.

This week, the single word, exact match of their business name is now averaging $19.80/click in Google ads.

[superclown2]

During their recent trial evidence surfaced to suggest that Google was artificially raising the cost of clicks on the top positions, without the agreement of the advertisers. The evidence for this is contained in the trial transcripts.

They have also, it seems, underlined this by giving a cheque to the US government to cover overcharging, plus penalties. I have not heard of refunds to anyone else.

Could overcharging like this, without the knowledge or consent of their customers, constitute fraud? And isn't fraud a criminal, rather than civil, matter?

[ember]

My favorite was when we'd find a keyword without any competition (this was years ago), bid and wait for the traffic. Except Google wouldn't run the ad because, as Google would tell us, our bid wasn't high enough, even though we were the only bidder.

[Kendo]

our bid wasn't high enough, even though we were the only bidder.

It didn't get worse... it was always like this.

In the end I called the bluff and found that I could get 10c clicks even when they said that it would cost a lot more. We got billed to the max allowance for those 10c clicks. But we never once saw one of our ads.

[Shepherd]

And now google is removing the option to pay for ads with credit card, requiring check or wire transfer for some advertisers. They are trying to save the credit card fees.

Imagine selling a product that has a near zero cost of goods sold and needing to make moves like this to keep your stockholders happy. google is in way bigger trouble than we know. Probably we are all in way bigger trouble than we know.

[Kendo]

They are trying to save the credit card fees

It may be more to reduce the amount of chargebacks claiming unauthorised use of card or good not as described. In some countries banks are bound by law to refund all such claims. I have had banks support false claims even when the signature that they received on the claim form matched those on my client agreement.

Dealing with chargebacks is not only frustrating, it can be time consuming... that is where the cost saving is.