Scammy MFA sites, round two

using my site's URL

[Leva]

To make a long story very short, I have scammy MFA sites using my site's URL as the display URL, with the destination URL different. This is a branding issue for me; they're advertising a product unrelated to my site. (Long story short, I owned the domain before the product existed.) And they're just sleazy. And there's a profitable referral program associated with said product so they've got lots of incentive to advertise using my URL all over the internet.

Is there any way to get adwords to block use of the domain as a display url by anyone other than me? They have been unhelpful so far with this.

Leva

[Zealot]

If the domain on the display url is different than that of the destination url, then you can write to adwords support and they'll suspend the ads. This is against the adwords t&cs.

Zealot

[Khensu]

Yep, the root domain of the display and the landing url must be the same.

Go fry em!

[Leva]

I have complained. It's like playing whack-a-mole. And I think it's the same people doing it because the new sites are just like the old sites, same layout.

Leva

[mike_ppc]

Any results?

[Leva]

Complained again. They kept claiming they couldn't find the ads OR that they couldn't stop them from displaying my URL (yes, I have that e-mail claiming they can't stop them from displaying my URL). Ads finally disappeared but they haven't gotten back to me. Ads were never difficult to find, though it occurs to me that the bad guys could be geotargeting them for areas where there are no Google employees ...

Worse, it appears that they had a scam routine going where:

1) They showed my URL
2) Destination URL was a page that tried to download spyware
3) Destination URL redirects to another page.

I reported THIS new development and the ads disappeared shortly thereafter. So I suspect they COULD find the ads, they just didn't want to deal with it. (I seem to remember this is a known scam with adsense, but it's disturbing they're using MY url for the display URL.)

-- Leva

[smallcompany]

I saw something similar on Yahoo some time ago. An ad claiming antivirus or antispyware software but actually redirecting and offering a download of nothing else but some spyware/adware or whatever, obviously. They even put “yaho.recommended” in their URL and took spot #1 on very prominent name. I was screaming loudly when I saw that.
Educating folks at Yahoo was another story, especially now when they have two URLs to deal with, after centuries of one only. Anyway, this is Google corner…

…going back to Google… they never admit any mistake… but sometimes it is simply about communication between the client and support. I found so many of Google AdWords support people not understanding “copy shortcut” term. Some of them asked “did you mean copy location”? I said yes like when you put a stake onto black. Too many of them would click onto ad to check destination while I wanted to get their attention to destination URL that is within the ad not really on end landing page. Why? Simply because so many of these cheaters, scammers and so on are doing redirection even multiple in some cases.

At the end of all they should take your claim seriously and disapprove all ads that have non-matching display URL and destination page.