Site not in Adwords program appeared in Sponsored Results

[fred9989]

Researching my sites this morning, I found one of my sites which appears in position 2 of the organic results also popping up under Google's sponsored results column, in top place. (Simultaneously.)
That is astounding, since I have no Adwords program in place. Yet the domain name was mine, and when I clicked on the advert, it went to my site URL.
How could an advert for my site appear like this?
Any explanations please?
Rod

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Hello fred9989 - I've been with AdWords for many years, and have heard of this a literal handful of times.

Back in the day when I was in a position to research such things, it nearly always turned out to be someone within a small company (usually in a 'marketing-like' function) taking it upon themselves to advertise the company without bothering to mention it to anyone else.

A possibility in your case?

I've also heard of sites about an area of heavy 'fan' interest being advertised using AdWords by 'fans' of that interest area who like a site (that is not their own) enough to pay a modest amount to send traffic to it.

AWA

[smallcompany]

There is a black side of it too:

- bid jamming (trapping)
- making "enemies" to "the site"
- masking who is who, and who is doing something
- who knows what else in order to do something unethical

I believe that, as long as you can prove the ownership of the site, you can request the removal of ad(s).
Even without explicit policy that you have to won a site in order to run ads for it, Google can still forward your request to the one that is doing it.

[eeek]

Could somebody have typed their own domain wrong?