When publisher site is full of lies, half-truths, and misreps.

do you call big daddy and tell, or sit down and clap up

[Tapolyai]

A simple dilemma.

Adsense on my site is showing advertising for a product.
I follow the link to the advertiser (no, not by clicking on it).
The advertiser presents itself as a comparative site of a particual type of product.
Within the comparison, there are several false statements, misrepresentations, and obfuscations. Many “buyer beware”, licensing requirements, method of development, etc. statements – all incorrect, made to scare buyers away from competitors.

I am 100% sure that 90% of information is false (the other 10% are the stop words ;)) on this site.

I do not want my customers going there. My site is specifically against these types of vendors.

How would you deal with this?

[edited by: Tapolyai at 3:50 pm (utc) on Dec. 23, 2005]

[ken_b]

Block the ad and move on.

[cerebrum]

Just complaint about the specific URL to Google. They will take care.

[Hobbs]

false information can be a judgment call, so unless this site is ripping off your visitors, they are free to state whatever they wish, be it true or false.

Your simplest action is to block them.

As for notifying Google:

a) If it is a blatant rip off not a judgment call and these lies are in the text of the ad itself, Google Advertiser TOS covers such matters, and they will take action, its your call to report it, but personally I wouldn't waste my time unless they are my competition.

b) If the false information is on the site and not on the ads, I think Google will not waste much time on the matter as it is up to the owners of the competing brands to take action.

[david_uk]

Block! Simple and effective.

[incrediBILL]

If it's a website in the US, drop a line to the FTC and let the run begin.

Go to FTC.GOV and find the right place to report them.

[moTi]

i feel ashamed of many of the advertisers on my sites. some are incapable to produce a proper landing page, and they are obviously designed and written by and for non educated people.

on the one hand experienced publishers who know how to edit their content and how to code a page properly so it appeals nicely to their users. we know how to squeeze the money out of our pages through continuous optimisation.
on the other hand a lot of (amateur) advertisers/publishers who check out the adwords/adsense program and try to earn a buck with shady practices. we don't want our users to go there or to be associated with them.
but that's the way things are. if i would block them all, i wouldn't earn much money..

[gendude]

I had to deal with one advertiser that was creating ads for fake products that would be of interest to my users (I'm in a niche of a niche, and it was targeted towards my niche of a niche area). It was very irritating to say the least - several people emailed me about the ad, and I took it to google, they said just block the domain.

[blue_eagle]

Yup just block the url. They probably are paying very small amount ppc anyways which wont benefit you. Tell em to google and enjoy the new advertiser.

[Tapolyai]

Ok, thanks.

Then to take it a step further - have you added any web sites to your block list that were not direct competitors? That is "generic" sites that you did not wish to get ads from?

[david_uk]

I block ebay and all MFA's that I see on my site. I don't block ads from genuine advertisers - even competitors unless they are really badly targetted and there for a while. Normally badly targetted ads dissapear pretty fast without blocking.

Result is that I only have genuine advertisers showing. Ctr dropped, but the cpc of the ads showing meant that there was no loss of income. Since starting this policy in July, income has grown steadily month by month.