It's getting to be a bit pricey to include the Search partners to get that AOL traffic
I tried changing all the broad matches to phrase and exact and it still didn't help. This click fraud bunch is able to generate bogus clicks almost precisely equal to what would have been my profits.
Must write support about this.
Watch your logs. Can I say the URL begins with the letter "u"?
One of the new tricks is to create a fake search engine and have all the domain traffic redirect through it under various search phrases. It has been reported and no response from Google on it.
They've been letting anyone with a site into their search network these days. When some unknown site that was registered 2 weeks ago is sending more traffic than Google, you know something is up. Unfortunately, Google doesn't seem to have much respect for advertisers and the integrity of their search network.
One of the new tricks is to create a fake search engine and have all the domain traffic redirect through it under various search phrases. It has been reported and no response from Google on it.
Bears,
That's what I was trying to describe above. So there are many doing it! And indeed I'm seeing as many clicks from these useless sites as from Google and the "good" Search Partners.
It made no sense, 100 clicks a day from this site for a term that there is no way I'd show on Google or any other "good" partner for. No way humans are visiting these sites. It's just so transparent, but they get away with it. A two second glance makes it readily apparent these sites are pure fakes. You also have to fear that 2 second glance is going to introduce some yet to be discovered trojan on my machine. (Tip: View them in a browser like Netscape 3)
I have these 3 campaigns whose products sell themselves. When I was in the hospital for an extended period, I joked that they were providing me my "disability pay" since they required no attention. Now we're in the 2nd month of near zero profit on them.
Painfully, I dumped the Search Network on them. I knew many customers came from people who used their ISP home pages, AOL, etc as their main search resources. Now I have to say goodbye to those sales. As someone put it a while back, there is no technological barrier that prevents Google from site targeting Search the way we can Content.
It's ironic that I can have a Content only campaign in effect if I set my bids so low that Google won't show the ads, but Content will. However, I must bid high to gain a spot on the "real" Search Partners thereby also donating to the leeches too.
I know for MFA sites, there are "out of the box" packages that allow you to generate thousands of useless Content pages. You can search for them right on Google! I've read forums where they brag what they make. Do you drive a Hummer?
I have a feeling the methods you describe are being made available for "amateur" click frauders on the Search side now too.
Why can't Google appreciate the fact that advertisers like us with real products resist the temptation to take off our "white hats"? It would be so easy to retire in 2 years rather than continuing to make our money the "hard way".
Has anyone gotten a sense that these lowlifes target only what they perceive as the high dollar value keywords? I'm afraid to look at some of my other site's logs until I see my doctor about getting tranquilizers first!
Here's what I saw happen...
Google gave in and gave us the tools to exclude unwanted content sites... so content sites got smart and added a search box to their totally useless sites. Since Google is all about profit and not about quality search partner sites...Google now considers those same content websites to be "search partners" now that they have that stupid search box.
What does that mean to us...paying advertisers?
a) You can no longer exclude those crappy content...oh, I mean crappy search partner websites.
b) You pay PREMIUM click prices on the new partner sites that you can't get rid of or exclude yourself from
c) You see an increase in click costs, a decrease in conversions and obviously more click fraud (its not just me - all my clients are seeing it and suffering from it).
So...I think I'll take the suggestion above and turn off the partner website option for all my accounts.
Daily click cost 1/2 of what it was. Campaigns are now turning a nice profit again - same sales volume.
I'd be insane to turn Search back on again for these campaigns.
Never used to be this way.....
Israel
Why can't Google appreciate the fact that advertisers like us with real products resist the temptation to take off our "white hats"? It would be so easy to retire in 2 years rather than continuing to make our money the "hard way".
Or maybe you'd be one of the people contributing to "Why have I been penalized?" threads in the Google Search News forum.
The make-hay-while-the-sun-shines crowd have nothing to lose except their ill-gotten gains. You, on the other hand, can't afford to put a real business at risk.
Has anyone gotten a sense that these lowlifes target only what they perceive as the high dollar value keywords?
That may have been the case once upon a time. These days, they seem to be targeting everything. And why not, when computers make it easy to spew out pages for every conceivable keyphrase?
Google claims that since those sites have a search box, that the search box now makes them a search partner.
Wow that's news to me. Are you sure? I thought they hand select their search partners.
The "partners" are nothing more than MFA sites with a search box. I opted for the partner network and have been checking my logs for the past two weeks. All of my paid traffic comes from these sites. Every single one of those domains is a misspelling of a well known brand so obviously these publishers are deliberately ripping off advertisers. I have since opted out.
More and more advertisers will begin to realize what's going on and will select only Google search for their ads. I have a hard time understanding why Google would want to risk its reputation for the money generated by these lowlifes.
Has anyone gotten a sense that these lowlifes target only what they perceive as the high dollar value keywords?
EuropeForVisitors came up with the scary but quite plausible possibility:
That may have been the case once upon a time. These days, they seem to be targeting everything. And why not, when computers make it easy to spew out pages for every conceivable keyphrase?
Well, the shrink had given my wife some tranquilzers so I began examining some other logs. Hopefully my research will help some in making that fateful decision whether to drop the Search Partner Network.
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Right now, 90% of my account is broken into two distinct categories of merchandise.
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One is an area that has been rife for exploitation and ripoffs since before there was even a www - However, I've always been on the honest end of that spectrum although I do use some of those keywords that are perceived as high dollar. I average 35 cents a click over the long haul, even though I know of competitors who pay at least a couple of USD for those keywords. I suppose my good fortune is a combo of longevity, luck or perhaps some quirk/bug/feature of the algo. Also, they're worth a few dollars to the unscrupulous if they subsequently con customers once they're "reeled in".
Those words were getting killed, more so recently than ever before. While certain "partners" were generating the majority of the clicks, needless to say they never generated a single sale. Something I was foolishly unaware of while I was making a decent profit. It took 1 1/2 months of barely breaking even to really do an analysis. In fact this month I was $400.00 USD in the hole on those campaigns - something that never happened in almost 4 years of virtually untouched, though tweaked campaigns. I'd been selling gold widgets, it appears.
And throughout that long history, the vast majority of sales came from Google proper.
Now a week off the Search Network and the whole thing has turned around and is making a sound profit now. I'm inspired to experiment freely now knowing I've little to fear beyond competitor fraud. Ironically there's a sort of gentleperson's agreement among competitors based on others I've spoken with in this industry that there is enough of a table for everyone to grab a little money off of it.
Since the TOS have rules that all products are "widgets", I suppose I can say we're not talking about porn here, BTW.
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In any case, those campaigns used only several hundred keywords out of a 50,000 keyword account.
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Now, the good news (and your mileage may vary) is that the rest of my account is devoted to a broad range of ads with ever changing keywords. Less likely to make it attractive for the bad guys to spew out the keywords needed to keep up with short lived events that I advertise.
Long term overall CPC is 15 cents, often much less.
I went through the logs for several sites. I did not see the seedy partners represented in the clicks at all. In some cases, I saw the 'adware type' sites that take over home pages, but presumably those people were either helpless or clueless and made do with those sites as their search vehicles. I saw the fine partners over and over again.
I also saw I was being unintentionally double served because of the 'shopping comparison sites' that also act as "Search Partners" and using a dictionary definition, well they are search sites. Unless I'm more naive than I appear to be, I think they simply want to bolster their choices by featuring some Adword's ads. Either way I win the way I see it. They may see my stand alone ad and go for it or pay Google to click the 'shopping site' and then pay Google again to click my ad. A little cross-checking showed my destination URL remained intact so I'd get the sale either way. I didn't ask for this, it's part of Google's 'design' ;)
So clearly I'm going to leave that sector running in the Search Network. I was favorably impressed to see the AOL's represented, the ISP home pages that install themselves to users who either don't know how to change them or find some value in them. After all, they are filled with attractive content. They got weather, news stories, entertainment news, everything it takes to be a legitimate web portal.
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So take my experiment FWIW. If I were a lawyer or a mortgage broker, I'd stay miles away from the Search Partner Network. However, for certain unpredictable markets it will work.
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Israel
Now a week off the Search Network and the whole thing has turned around and is making a sound profit now. I'm inspired to experiment freely now knowing I've little to fear beyond competitor fraud.
[edited by: TrafficGal at 11:37 pm (utc) on Mar. 22, 2007]
What you say is true. However, if you see post #3 on this thread, you'll see that at least one "Search Partner" is playing real dirty. Somehow they're messing with the showings.
They've invented something that causes ads to be displayed on their joke of a network for a single word that would never trigger an ad elsewhere. One peek at the site and you know no one would ever visit there for an actual "search".
They were accounting for the majority of my overall clicks in those campaigns and entirely robbing my profits. I accept partial blame since I have my finger in too many pies right now and am fighting illness to boot (no pity needed ;) )
I'm going to make yet another report to the Google team about them since I doubt they're the only ones doing this. Whoever developed this 'workaround' is probably marketing it to click frauders the world over.
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FWIW, I suppose some of my sites are now "Search Partners" too since I put the Google Search Box on the bottom of pages. My only aim was to give my sites a little more credence. A harmless 'mind game' to plant the thought in consumers' heads that this site is legitimate and accepted by Google. Otherwise, I just look like "Joe's Widgets".
I don't think I've even reached enough for that $100.00 AdSense payout so don't worry about this Search Partner ;)
Unless I go to the trouble of compensating for that Cookie bug that the Publisher login is prone to, I usually can't see those stats.
Israel
I think I will opt for site targeting... as that will be better atleast I will be able to select the websites where I wanna show my ads.
I don't think it's true about any site with a search box is automatically a search partner - I have a half dozen personal sites of my own, and every single one has a Google search box (and most have AdSense), not to mention one CSE, and I'm pretty sure I'm not considered a search partner.
