Findwhat cancels keywords because of Adsense ads

[CPCretirement]

Findwhat has decided that some of my keywords need to be put on hold until I change the way that Adsense ads are displayed on two of my sites.

I am running the leaderboard format. It is in colors to match the sites. The actual site links are directly below the leaderboard. Apparantly FW does not believe that the Google ads are labeled well enough to indicate that they are external links. I have been told that they must be labeled as "Links To xxxxx" or that I cannot run keyword ads on those sites.

I have emailed them explaining that the ads are labeled as "Google Ads". I am awaiting a response.

FW will certainly lose some business if they make this an official policy. I will not be changing my site for them. I will simply stop advertising there and switch that portion of the budget to Adwords.

[justageek]

I'm not sure I understand. Your keywords meaning you buy keywords from FindWhat or you have Google ads showing on a FindWhat powered search results page? Or something else?

JAG

[CPCretirement]

I buy keyword ads in a number of places for my sites. I buy them from Findwhat to drive traffic to my sites just as I buy keywords through AdWords.

The sites that I am driving traffic to all have Adsense running on them.

Findwhat does not believe that my sites meet their standards for buying keywords because they do not believe that the Adsense ads are labeled as ads/external links clearly enough.

[justageek]

Oh. Tell them to go pound salt then :-)

JAG

[CPCretirement]

Tell them to go pound salt then :-)

hehe. My thoughts exactly. Unless they change their minds. I'm giving them one shot and then I will simply cancel the account with them.

[justageek]

Yep. I like them a lot so don't get me wrong but they don't have the power (for lack of a better word) to dictate that to you. IMHO of course.

JAG

[Blue_Fin]

Sounds like a power struggle to me and it'll backfire on them. I bet the tech media would love to pick up on this one if you are so inclined.

[justageek]

Sounds like a power struggle to me and it'll backfire on them

I'll second that.

[jaxomlotus]

Let wired.com know about this. I guaranteed you that Findwhat changes their policy immediately.

[CPCretirement]

I'll wait and see how they respond to my email explaining that they are Google ads. It may be just one person there who did not realize that they are ads.

[CPCretirement]

They are now saying that the descriptions in my keyword ads that I place through Findwhat must be changed. The text of my ads must include the phrase "Links to blah blah sites".

:confused:

I'd like them to show me a site on the internet that doesn't link to other sites! Why single out the sites that have Google Adsense leaderboards for this treatment? They must think that they look too much like internal site links or something.

[justageek]

I'm at a loss of words. Don't know what to tell you :-(

JAG

[CPCretirement]

It's not a big deal to modify the keyword ads. It's just an annoying waste of time.

[jaxomlotus]

I'd like them to show me a site on the internet that doesn't link to other sites! Why single out the sites that have Google Adsense leaderboards for this treatment? They must think that they look too much like internal site links or something.

No, it sounds like it's a power struggle. They want to force publishers to drop adsense which would harm google's adwords program (their competitor).

I'm sure they know it's against Google's ToS to label their ads.

[Blue_Fin]

Did you give in to their demand or drop them?

[CPCretirement]

Did you give in to their demand or drop them?

Neither yet. I have other keywords running in the account and still have a positive balance that I need to burn through. In fact, a few of the other ads point to the same sites! They have very similar descriptions but were not flagged for some reason or other.

I haven't decided what to do yet. On the one hand I want to stop using them altogether on principle. On the other hand I'm getting some inexpensive traffic. From a business perspective it makes sense to keep using them.

I think that I may just not modify the ads that were flagged and keep running the others.

[Jenstar]

You can always make separate landing pages for FindWhat that don't run the AdSense code. It is quite common for people to make different landing pages to meet the PPC editorial site guidelines (ie. AdWords no-popup rule comes to mind where many have made separate landing pages just for AdWords traffic).