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Fine, they have a right to bid, I suppose, but how come they bid so much and screw it up for the rest of us, and how come they can get away with crappy descriptions and no sense headlines when I have gotten rejected for far more on topic copy leading to a far more on topic webpage.
I know I am just pissing in the wind, but sometimes you just have to shout your frustration to keep your head from exploding...
but how come they bid so much and screw it up for the rest of us
I think you know the answer to that one - they've got more money than sense. As I write that, I know that that isn't true - they just have so many terms that they automatically blanket bid them, probably making sure that they're top in each case. So they have lots of money but not a lot of time to micro-manage.
He was talking about managing "buckets" of keywords- can't recall how many keywords are in a bucket. So yeah, it looks like they could probably cut out some fat from their PPC campaigns.
Can't remember if this applied solely to Google AdWords or both.
They have more money than sense
You can say that again. By accident I found that Ebay is bidding on the word 'the' on FindWhat! Check it out. "Buy and Sell The On eBay."
I complained twice about Dell who are bidding on terms for products that they don't even sell. The bid prices are 6 to 12 times higher than the next bidder. I got an interesting response from Overture - we cannot see any listings for Dell for that term. ARE THEY BLIND OR STUPID?
It almost seems ethical to instigate click-fraud against these companies so that THEY might drop the terms.
If the bid price says $1.00 but then overture actually only charges them (ebay, or any other big bidder, for example) $.75 or something, then the implications for the rest of us are just too foul to consider.
If this was happening and got discovered, I can imagine the outcry, followed about 2.5 seconds later by an enterprising lawyer with a class action suit, and then 3 years later we all get letters in the mail saying if you ever bid on overture, mail this back to get your $5 settlement share.
Hard to beleive overture would risk doing that, but then again, not impossible, I suppose...
I really don't think they could ever be successfully sued for giving discounts either. It is their business, they can charge/discount as they please. (at least that is how I see it)
Overture could not be sued.
If they could, so could your local stationery store that sells one ream of paper for $3.00 each to you because you by five reams, but $2.50 each to the company next door when they buy their 600 reams. This makes business sense.
What does not make business sense is that EBay and Dell are allowed to bid on terms they want - there seems to be no checks against their accounts.
