Hello all, As you can see, I’m a new poster here. I usually just lurk and take in the discussions, but recently I encountered a situation that’s had me itching for feedback from the search community. First, a little background. I am the Internet Marketing Manager for a company that spends approximately $1 million per year in Google AdWords (for a lead generation site). We are the industry leader and the top advertiser in our category. However, over the past month or so, we’ve noticed that several of our competitors have launched what appear to be secondary AdWords accounts using separate destination URLs (it’s actually happening on YSM as well, but for the purpose of this discussion I’ll focus on Google). This has enabled them to have their ads show twice on the same page for a given keyword. Although each competitor’s secondary landing page has a different design and content than the main one, they share the exact same function - to generate leads for the competitor in question. For example, for the keyword query “widgets,†Company BCD has an ad for their main Web site - www.bdc.com - in the third position, above the organic listings. Their second ad - pointing to the site www.secondurl.info, which is a landing page only - appears in the sixth position in the right-hand column. Again, the two sites look fairly unique, but they are both advertising Company BDC’s services (not two unique services, mind you - but the exact same ones). This tactic for double-serving has been employed by two of the top three competitors in our industry (a third, smaller player has recently jumped on the bandwagon as well). Now, these practices were in such clear violation of AdWord’s TOS that we didn’t foresee a problem getting Google to stop them. I called our AdWords rep and let her know about the issue, and she said it would be resolved in a few days. About a week later, I received an e-mail stating that appropriate action had been taken against the advertisers in question. However, I then queried one of our popular search terms on Google just to check, and the same two competitors were still showing multiple listings! So I put in another call to AdWords and told them that the double-serving was still going on, and our rep said that it would be helpful if we gave her a list of the keywords for which it’s happening. It seemed to me that Google was dragging their heels by making us police the advertisers for violations, but I acquiesced and told her I’d compile the info. Before I start collecting data to send them, however, I wanted to see if anyone out there in the SEM community has experienced a situation like this. If so, what is the most effective way of getting Google to take action? I insinuated (in a roundabout way) that if the double-serving is allowed to continue, then we are going to follow suit - except we’ll do it with four or five separate URL’s instead of just two. Now, I’d much rather have Google resolve the issue according to their TOS, but every day that goes by, we’re seeing a negative impact on our CPC and CPA figures. I mean, if they just turn a blind eye to infractions like these, aren’t they basically telling other advertisers that’s it’s OK to do the same thing? Please - let me know if any of you have insight into this issue. I would love to hear your feedback, and any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hi Bobby, Very bad situation, I've never experienced this exactly situation. Normally the AdWords system detect multiple accounts in a very good way and I don't understand why it has not been triggered yet. Take a look in these cases: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=821448&postcount=15 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=754995&postcount=1 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=793954#post793954 The good news is that after the system ban our friend there, it will be practically impossible to your competitor to advertiser again in AdWords. Good Luck
Why can't you just do the same thing. I wouldn't recommend this but I've heard that there a companies that you can hire to click on competitors ads thousands of times, which would be completely unethical of course. Is there a reason you want to maintain the No1 spot? It doesn't convert anywhere near as well as spots 3-7. You could save yourself hundreds of thousands a year by dropping your keyword bids. Then spend the saving on another adwords account and beat them at their own game.
It never happened to me but if You are having this problem at a bigger scale it can be really really anoying. It's the duty of Google to resolve this problem. Don't let Yourself and go until the end with this problem!
Spot 3 is the best from my experience. Then 2. I think this is a case of it not being bannable, otherwise I could just set up an account advertising my competitor and get him banned from AdWords.
Hi Bobby and welcome to DP. There are still some loopholes that can be exploited in order to get multiple listings to show at the same time as you are seeing. The problem lies in the inability to definitively identify multiple accounts as being held by the same entity. I am afraid that there will have to be much more abuse before it will be successfully addressed. If you hired your cousin to open an adwords account and allow you access to it so you can put your ads in there, how can Google know? Especially if it uses a different URL and different ad text. Wish I had better news. ~B
Without knowing the specifics of your / your competitor's situations it's hard to say for sure, but this activity may be well within Google's TOS if the extra adWords account is not actually being run by your competitor, but instead being run by a separate entity as an affiliate promoting your competitor's products / services. Google is perfectly happy to allow multiple affiliates to promote the same product so long as they have unique landing domains.
Bobby - same thing happens to me all the time. Send an e-mail to your account rep with specifics and they will take care of it...at least for a bit until people start double serving again. I have to report a lot of the same companies every few weeks. Google shuts down their secondary ( and 3rd, 4th, 5th) accounts and then in a few weeks they have new accounts set up all over again. If the company you're reporting is a big spender you'll just have to keep reporting them. Google will not terminate their primary account no matter how many times they break the rules. I wrote about this issue a a couple months back... Google could care less about double serving
Why can't you just do the same thing. I wouldn't recommend this but I've heard that there a companies that you can hire to click on competitors ads thousands of times, which would be completely unethical of course.
Assuming you're comfortable with a cheating asshole you can. At the end of the day that won't help your sales/campaigns at all.