Competitor uses dead link for ad!

Is this a way of cheating adwords?

[realgames]

I have noticed that one of our competitors always gets listed at position 1 or 2 for the most competitive keyword in our market. They have their correct URL in the display ad but the link URL seems to be missing the www and hence when clicked you get a 404 page not found error. This has been the way for months and I cannot fathom what is going on. I cannot see how the competitor can be paying Adwords what would be a considerable sum to display an ad which leads nowhere nor how Google does not check the link.

Or have they found some bug in Adwords whereby they get an ad with their URL displayed for free and do not pay for clicks because the landing page does not exist?

[limoshawn]

I've had ads going to bad urls in the past and those ads cost just as much as ads that go to active urls when they get clicked on.

I would say that the best bet is that your ip has been blocked by your competitor which could lead you to getting a 404 page.

why are you clicking on their ads anyway? ;)

[SEOMike]

seems to be missing the www and hence when clicked you get a 404 page

That's a pretty bad server setup if that's the case. Try viewing the site by clicking the ad from home or through a proxy. Also, make sure the adwords ad doesn't have a typo.

Funny if it does have something wrong and actually delivering a 404 to every click. I can hear them now... "This adwords is crap. We're spending a fortune on clicks and there are no additional sales!" :)

[LifeinAsia]

I can hear them now... "This adwords is crap. We're spending a fortune on clicks and there are no additional sales!" :)

One wonders if his competitor is one of the posters of "spent lots of money on AdWords with no sales" messages!

[JustGirl]

We had an affiliate bidding on our product names which is against our TOS, so we shut the affiliate account down (after trying to reach them). So, the links went dead, the ad clicked through to an error message, but it stayed in place for a month. We contacted our Google representative and they took the ad down.

My guess is that the advertiser doesn't realize their ad isn't working. Imagine a person with thousands of affiliate accounts and millions of keywords not managing them properly.

[bwnbwn]

This is not from the server it is being caused by the Google tracking url after the domain name. We had this same issue and had to discontinue the adwords tracking code.

Hey get into the good side of this guy or gal let him know they are geting killed maybe you could ask for a link from his home page for some valuable information..or just be nice and let him know.

How I found out a competitor called us up and told me. This was about a year or more ago.