Adwords Is A Very Evil Place
This guest post is from Clint Dixon:
Do No Evil – Google’s mantra as we all know, however they do not practice such a concept and here is why;
I am a internet advertising professional. Over the years I have always said that advertising with Google Adwords using their content network was a sure and painful way to drain your bank account quickly and make Sergy Larry & Jack much much richer.
Now while many think (keyword) Google is a great company, I have problems with any organization trying to pass it’s self off as an advertising auction retailer, that cannot make the most simplistic decisions and choices that are in the best interest of the Advertiser.
In this case the Advertiser is me. I have several domains I have parked and earning cash and as such decided I wanted to see if I could drive incremental traffic to one of my parked domains with Google Adwords Content Network of websites.
Now one would think Google being as large as they are would have some websites in the Content Network that would be related to Real Estate.
So I started a new campaign recently for a domain in the Real Estate category and under the niche of ‘flipping houses’. This is where someone buys an old house renovates it and sells at a nice profit. Currently a growing category within the Real Estate sector.
So I set everything up in Adwords by writing my Ad
Flip This House
Flip This House insider secrets
Find house renovation tips & facts!
FlipThisHouse-Info.com
Want To Flip A House?
Find flippng house insider secrets
Visit today for free tips & tricks!
FlipThisHouse-Info.com
and a few others Ads as well as making sure to also male use of Dynamic Keyword text within a couple different ads to improve quality scoring.
I then set up a small Adgroup, with a set of test keyword terms which I have noted below,
alexander flip ginger house this
antonio flip house san this
atlanta flip house this
davis flip house richard this
domain flip house myspace.com this
e flip house this
flip ginger house this” ** 0.30
flip house montelago this
flip house montelongo this
flip house show this
flip house show this tv
flip house this tlc
flip this house
As I mentioned above I would have thought Google would have an array of real estate related websites to display my ads across.
I let the campaign run a week to see what happens on each day and to measure performance across the run of sites Google would choose to display my ads on.
Revenues we’re less than my advertising costs and so I took a 25% loss over the past week. I think I am lucky that I only lost 25% of my money, Google likes to cut deep when they can, and it seems they have no problem with earning a larger percentage of my money.
I ran a report today to see my Ads performance on Googles Content Network. One of the first things I saw made me angry to say the least. Actually it wasn’t anger as much as disgust and amazement.
I’ll try to do this backwords in saying I wanted to see the category of sites my ads ran across. I am amazed at the numbers I post below.
Real Estate Related Websites – 0 – As in None, Nothing, Not A One, Zip, Zero, Zilch, Nada, Nix, Nicht, Nyet, Nine, Nil, Not Any No matter how it’s sliced.
Next Category is
Not Sure What To Call It – 1
The site is
blingo.com
Some sort of mix of search with a Myspace aroma.
Myspace related pages – 41
Here are all of the worthless, useless, stupid, no good, unworthy of my hard earned money junk unrelated irrelevant non-real estate related websites the college graduates at Google came up with…….
123myspace.com
aerocharm.com
bumline.net
freeweblayouts.net
my-comments.com/love-myspace-comments/index.php.
myflashfetish.com/
blog.myspace.com/index.cfm.
bulletins.myspace.com/index.cfm
friends.myspace.com/index.cfm
home.myspace.com/index.cfm
messaging.myspace.com/index.cfm
profile.myspace.com/index.cfm
vids.myspace.com/index.cfm
viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page2.htm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page3.htm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page4.htm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page5.htm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page6.htm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page7.htm
myspacedev.com/myspace-icons/movie-tv/page8.htm
myspacehive.com
myspacelayouts.org
myspacelayouts.org/layouts/Retro
myspaceoryours.net/results1.php
myspacesupport.com/category.php
myspacetotal.com/ads/ad_delivery/show_ad.php
myspace.nuclearcentury.com/profile-preview.php
pimp-my-profile.com/layouts/layouts.php
pimpmypage.com/myspace-layouts/viewimage/46
revolutionmyspace.com/ad-right.php
revolutionmyspace.com/ad-right.php
skize.com/myspace-layouts/index.php
ultimatemyspace.com
ultimatemyspace.com/myspace_layouts/Abstract.html
ultimatemyspace.com/myspace_layouts/Abstract_2.html
ultimatemyspace.com/myspace_layouts/best_myspace_layouts.html
zeodo.com
viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm
As you can see Adwords is indeed a very evil place to be caught with your wallet exposed. Do not give Google the benefit of the doubt as they have no care as to the quality of sites your ads are displayed across as part of your campaigns.
Peace!
Clint Dixon is a search engine marketing, online advertising, professional and has consulted with over 500 online businesses from 6 continents. Clint serves on the Fortune Small Business Council , and is a Scholar Consultant for Gerson Lehrman Group, where he consults members in Technology, Media & Telecom, and Financial & Business Services, on internet advertising & search marketing. Visit Clint’s blog http://www.mediaviper.com.
Maybe I’m wrong, I’m still somewhat new to this PPC industry, but…
It sounds to me like the site was “sandboxed” from relevant results. Probably for the following reasons:
1) AdWords is pretty stringent about their quality score, especially recently, where they’ve cleared up what may merit a low quality landing page score .
2) To point out a very important detail in the linked article above, driving traffic to a parked page with ads on it would be considered arbitrage. A parked page has little to no content and is full of links. Obviously Google is going to see that automatically and stick it to you.
3) Not related to AdWords, but you probably want to watch yourself when attempting to drive traffic to a parked domain. Most services will not allow it in any way, but buying traffic is a big no no.
I’m not trying to be rude, but Chuck…really? A SEM expert? Consultant? Like I said already I’m still a newb at this stuff, but I don’t understand why you’d be so shocked at your results, based on the problems I was easily able to pinpoint with your campaign…
Sorry to say it looks like you set yourself up for disappointment from the get go; let me explain.
Just by looking at your keywords
alexander flip ginger house this
antonio flip house san this
atlanta flip house this
davis flip house richard this
domain flip house myspace.com this
e flip house this
flip ginger house this” ** 0.30
flip house montelago this
flip house montelongo this
flip house show this
flip house show this tv
flip house this tlc
flip this house
myspace.com and tv? are among your keywrods and these are probably very high-traffic keywords, moreso than ginger or tlc, or even house. None of your keywords use the word real estate, or even anything remotely related to real estate. Hence given all appearances AdWords gave you exactly what you asked for.
My recommendation would be to do more thorough research on the keywords and traffic you are trying to target. Knowing your longtail traffic results for example will give you an idea of what words are already generating traffic for you site. If you see there isn’t much competition for the keywords landing to your site it behooves you to target those words!
Read about a tool I use called hittail on my blog: http://millionster.com/articles/marketing/keyword-search-tracking-with-hittails/
Let me know if it helps.
Good lucK!
also.. just wanted to add.. What you think is related to Real Estate and what Google thinks is related to Real Estate aren’t one and the same. You need to look through the eyes of Google and by extension searchers…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Adwords Is A Very Evil Place, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.