Forum Moderators: martinibuster
A check of the first few shows this little request right above AdSense ads.
Some are trying to be clever by having the "Please Click the Ads" request on a separate website which links to a site with AdSense.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this will be the downfall of PPC if more isn't done.
Google really needs to crack down.
For those of you who will argue "Who cares, it has nothing to do with us," sites like these eat up daily and monthly Adwords budgets. They have everything to do with us and should be reported to Google.
Plus, the worse it gets the more the advertisers will bail out of PPC advertising and allocate money elsewhere.
But how likely is it?
I looked into the latest GOOG figures (31/03/05) yesterday, and from what I saw I guess we will not see a harsh action any time soon. 46% (or $584,115,000) of their revenue came from content network in Q1, and -unfortunately- we can only speculate how much of this revenue is generated from dubious sources (scrapers, click rings, or "click the ads" folks). 52% of their revenues come from Google sites. I assume that this is maxed out already.
It all boils down to this: If Google takes action against the TOS violators, their (advertising) revenue may drop. Maybe not like a stone, but it may drop - which is not well received by analysts. Some already say that it's a bit risky to go into Google stock. As soon as they rethink their optimistic ratings, *booooom* goes the bubble.
One interesting thought remains though: Someone said here that revenues do not necessarily need to drop! If they remove all the dubious guys, the Adsense ad inventory will be dramatically reduced, which may lead to potentially higher prices for the remaining ads. Less competition - higher prices. Benefiting existing publishers and Google, and in a way also the advertisers who see better conversion rates. But I guess the Google folks have done this calculation as well and came to the conclusion, that it is better to look away...
If Google does not do anything to prevent further TOS violations, however, there will be even more TOS violators in the future. It's like an invitation to print money. Advertisers will pull out of the content network (because they see it as useless), and SERPs will further be clogged up with useless AS spam. And down goes the revenue, and *booooom* goes the bubble, just a bit later.
Too sad. They can't get rid of the ghosts they called.
Oh, and we still have not seen YHOO and MSFT jumping on board. Interesting times ahead.
-- M.
On another thread, I happened to visit the website of someone whose posts carry a lot of weight via their personal profile to pick up tips. And guess what? Right on the about page is a call to "please click on the ads to support this website". So it isn't just scrapers.
Buzliteyear you have highlighted a problem that Google MUST do something about. If I were an advertiser you would not see for me dust if I knew Google was condoning this sort of tactic. Incidentally this is gathering momentum because this thread is similar to this one in the Google news forum [webmasterworld.com...]
The silence from Google on this is highly significant. When the press gets a hold of this, which they surely must because Google can be seen to be effectively condoning fraud on a grand scale, the **** will really hit the fan.
I don't subscribe to the opinion that the potential effect on profits is preventing them from doing this. The potential effect on profits if MSN and Yahoo come up with straight, clean contextual advertising systems where offenders are promptly removed would be far more significant. If I were an advertiser in this situation I know where my money would be going. Also, if fraudulent activity like this is taking place then surely they are obliged to act on behalf of their advertisers.
Buzliteyear has provided a great example of how to counteract any claim that they did not know that this was happening or that they could do nothing about it.
I am totally disillusioned by this. Normally I am fairly pragmatic, verging on cynical, in these situations but I just cannot believe that any "reputable" company openly allows this to happen. What are their advertisers thinking about?
My assumption is that G *does* know what is going on, and *is* concerned, and *does* want to stop it, but is playing a more subtle game than most of WW's posters are allowing is possible. If an army of PhDs (PhhD?) does not buy you the *chance* to play softly-softly-catchee-crookee then goodness knows what it does buy you.
Not all ugly problems are best solved with sledgehammers and the "obvious" short-term answer. Witness how populist politicians of all colours often fail to deliver with "obvious" solutions.
Give G a little credit for giving a s***. So far, since their inception, and from long before I had any commercial relationship with them, they have served my interests very well and very consistently, and when they have screwed up (eg by flattening my sites with over-zealous spidering!) a short and polite email has often has exactly the desired (and subtly-correct) effect fairly quickly. G doesn't have to listen to me: I am *nothing* to them at all. But they have consistently behaved well towards me. I also know a couple of the people who work there and they are thoroughly good guys and would simply not support G if G tried to behave the way that is often suggested: these guys would not have joined or they would leave again immediately. I don't believe the sun shines out of G's behind, but I do think that they are a good+ ethical and smart outfit. (And I'm NOT after a job there: I'm to dumb to get in!)
So I suggest a little less whining and conspiracy theorising would not go amiss, though I guess I should now expect DDoS attacks on my pro-bono Web sites on top of the 10,000+ SPAM messages I have to block each day from my mailbox... Bv<
Rgds
Damon
PS. This diatribe is not aimed at anyone in particular in this thread, BTW!
My assumption is that G *does* know what is going on, and *is* concerned, and *does* want to stop it, but is playing a more subtle game than most of WW's posters are allowing is possible. If an army of PhDs (PhhD?) does not buy you the *chance* to play softly-softly-catchee-crookee then goodness knows what it does buy you.
Sure Google has got a lot of things right in the past but if you were paying Google up to $30 a click for Adwords would you be quite happy to wait for them to deal with this at their convenience?
Not all ugly problems are best solved with sledgehammers and the "obvious" short-term answer.
It is totally wrong to suggest that anything other than the utmost urgency should be employed when they are knowingly providing the vehicle that allows their clients to be defrauded. This has been going on for a long time and apparently very little has been done about it. Buzliteyear pointed one sure fire method of finding at least some of the offenders. Let's see them get removed - today.
* We know that it is possible to find and remove them with the minimum of effort.
* We know that Google are sharing in the profits by taking this kind of income from their Adwords clients.
* We know that they know about it.
Draw your own conclusions.
We all know that Google uses kill words to display PSA's. It would be very easy for Google to see terms like "click on ads", "support this site" as kill words and only display PSA's.
Less competition - higher prices. Benefiting existing publishers and Google, and in a way also the advertisers who see better conversion rates.
This is probably correct, though advertisers may not at first see it that way. Better policing of the sites carrying Adwords is paramount for Google unless they have only an interest in raking in money.
I think Charlie's optimistic possibility is wishful thinking. I was thinking the same thing, but there's no way for us to know, really. I do wish that G would pay the scapers maybe .00000002 cents per click. Maybe they'd move on to another business.
All of this brings up an interesting point. Every morning I check my email and it's loaded with spam. I instantly delete about 40-80 emails and probably 100 more during the day. Add to that the AdSense scapers and phishing sites and what? is everybody in the world a scam artist? It's somewhat disheartening.
I can't wait for society to have evolved to the point, that all these defective models of humans, who wouldn't know a cash cow if it ---- a truck load gold coins in their yard each day could stroll into the Wal-mart and buy a perfectly new, made in China, brain for only $9.99, with a 60 day guaranteed money back return policy.
Think people. Think
"Actually, although "click rate" advertising on the web is still out there, as you have accurately described, click through advertising is not the best route on the web. There are much better ways.
It is too expensive as you have noted, a competitor can simply hire a "clicker". These clickers are paid at minimum wage rates and their entire job is to simply "click" on the competition internet ads. The competition then gets billed out the wazoo for all these click throughs, runs through their ad budgets try to stay on top of bids, and eventually is "clicked" out of existence. It is very cutthroat."
"Please Click the Ads"
Desperate measures like that are only undertaken by the really low earners who can afford to risk losing their account because it really doesn't matter all that much. They're small fry - ignore them.
The bigger picture is the ROI that AdWords advertisers are getting out of the content network overall. If that goes negative (for the larger proportion of them), AdSense has a problem.
Until then, relax and forget about it. It's all part of the overheads.
over 80,000 results
And how many are AdSense publishing sites?
TJ
Google don't like TOS violations any more than the advertisers do but they haven't a chance in hell of doing something about it manually. The preference for control via automated systems is going to make things more and more difficult for Google.
For those really annoyed about requests to click the ads - what kind of difference do you think it makes to CTR? Except for forum type sites where member loyalty may cause some clicks who else has visitors who actually heed requests to click ads?
they can start by knocking those down..something a couple "G sense" guys could do in an afternoon
I don't think the advertiser really understood where the worthless clicks were coming from. All he knew (and he spent a LOT OF MONEY) was that he got very little for his adwords budget. If he had gotten better results, he probably would have maintained a recurring adwords budget of several thousand dollars a month.
I happen to know the content niche that this advertiser
was running ads for. And every adsense site in that niche is a scraper.
Just keep clicking the google ads please!
Please click the Google Ads every 5 hours in my website above so that I will have money. I will use some of the Google Adsense money in donating to charities.Yeah, right!
I REALLY want to thank you guys. Could you please click the Google ads on the right of the pages, about once a day.
Hi all. Now that we've got the site up and runnning, we've got to cover hosting costs. These are rather hefty, around $200/mo, because we want the site to be speedy and able to handle lots more users.So, PLEASE CLICK THE GOOGLE ADS at the bottom of the pages. Do it for fun, do it for exercise, do it to help us keep this site free.
Instead of closing your browser when you're done, click some ads, then close your browser window!
This is just 4 of the sites on the first page of results for "please click the google ads" . There are 2700 results.
<edit>I might add that in doing this research it looks like a few of the sites in the search results may have already been banned.
This is just 4 of the sites on the first page of results for "please click the google ads" . There are 2700 results
And the first result for "please click the google ads" is webmasterworld. An automated system would ban Brett pretty pronto ;). OK, Brett doesn't run Adsense here but how does Google associate a website with a particular Adsense account? What if I used your pub code on my page that says "please click the google ads"? And how does Google distinguish between sites like WW/news sites who may be using the term in a post/article from those encouraging users to click ads?
[edited by: oddsod at 3:53 pm (utc) on June 28, 2005]
Ah! So it's not going to get done then?
I'm sure it will now....
But it really doesn't matter - ignore it. You're discussing the 1% - the important criteria is the 99%.
Look at the bigger picture.
if you were paying Google up to $30 a click for Adwords would you be quite happy to wait for them to deal with this at their convenience?
If I was getting a good ROI I honestly wouldn't give a hoot. It's all part of the overheads of running a business.
If I wasn't getting ROI, I'd just stop advertising on the content network and see if it improves.
TJ
It is now the best way to report any sites for violating the AdSense terms/policies, and you know it will be seen by the right people.
IMHO trillianjedi is right.
There's an old adage in the advertising world to the effect "We know that half the money we spend is wasted, we just don't know which half."
What Google's technology does is help you identify (and maybe trim) that wasted half a little better than in the bad old days BG (Before Google).
But it does not matter once overall your ROI is positive; all the rest is simply optimisation, albeit damn vexing I'll grant you.
Rgds
Damon
I took a quick gander at some sites with "click the ads" just to see what was going on and many didn't even have Google ads on them at all, maybe they were already booted, others had the offending text removed but it was still in Google's cache, and the few Google ads with "click the ads" over them I reported.
Yes it is a problem but NO, it's not 100% AdSense related and it appears Google has already addressed some of them.
The best thing I can recommend is report them when you run across them as Google does seem to address the problem as they can get to it. Just click the little "ads by google" link and cut and paste what's on the page.
back to your regularly scheduled hysterical rants about Google
Plus, the worse it gets the more the advertisers will bail out of PPC advertising and allocate money elsewhere.
We did just that some years ago. Once upon a time we were an Adwords advertiser. Not anymore.
Matt
Once upon a time we were an Adwords advertiser. Not anymore.
Your competitors thank you.
