Someone Stole My Adwords Ad!

Hello, just looking for some advice on what to do about this. I was running a successful adwords campaign on a clickbank product. I was direct linking to the product page. After about 6 months I suddenly noticed that my daily impressions were dropping off. Everytime I checked to see if my ad was running It was....or so I thought. Someone had copied my adwords ad exactly and out bid me for the url. He was using ad schedular to only run his ads at times when i would'nt notice. Eventually I drove him off by using some underhanded tactics, but then he came back and suddenly my conversions went from about 1 in 15 to virtually 0 in 100!!! I'm very confused by how this is possible, but I have to believe that this guy has something to do with it?? Anyway, I just wanted to know if anyone has ever heard of anything like this and if anyone can offer any suggestions about what to do?? Thanks

 

his probably using this software to find al your keywords and prices your paying

fact is there is nothing you can do about it. you might want to try and beat him at his own game but he hasnt doen anythign against the law or TOS for clickbank or google.

 

It's common in any business to stole successful ideas. You just have to find another way.

 

wow can u prevent that software or watever it is from doing that? And it finds all the keywords, that must take a dam long time?

 

and i think you dont know that affiliate links are not allowed here

 

Is it a fake claim or can this software actually uncover all the keywords ? Experts can verify on this ?

 

Mine get stole constantly - I just swear at them and move on.

 

I used to use this method, I read about it a few years ago and couldn't resist trying it. Quite ashamed of myself for using it but it did work. I went up against a few competitors that were much better funded than me, and forced them to pay upto $10 a click. They were more than happy to do this to get rid of me.

Needless to say I didn't win the bidding wars and ended up wasting a tonne of cash. Didn't use software though (don't think it existed at the time), just spent a few weeks studying the particular ad / keywords to make sure it was performing well before trying to steal it. The fact is, if the ad is working, most of the time the person / company running the ad can afford to out-bid you.

A dirty tactic but when I was new to the game (like a lot of people on here), you'll try anything to get results.

 

This is just ridiculous. Google needs to do something about this.

 

The problem is no one owns rights to an ad. Anyone can put up any ad they want even if it is an exact copy of someone elses. All these spy programs encourage this type of business. Not much you can do except outbid them and hope they go away or hope you have a way better history then them and google will force them out with very high bids for a long time.

 

evolve and move on

 

I could be wrong, so don't quote me on this, but software to effectively 'steal' or some may prefer 'emulate' a competitors campaign is constantly being developed and released. The latest, which I haven't purchase (and I'm not affiliated in anyway or promoting it - just highlighting it's existance) is something called Google Nemesis which I think is designed to do exaclty this - somehow!

 

Is there a way to prevent these spy programs from obtaining your keywords, does anyone know how they do it?

 

i dont think there is anyway to stop it. i am not sure how they do it but i would be very very interested in finding out as i currently pay for the software each month

if i could get it free that would be really really good.

 

It's as simple as doing a search. These programs only need to emulate a given search for any term and the ads show up. They simply take the ad copy and run it against the highest bidders for the term. Put 2 and 2 together and you know what the competition is paying for their keywords, how many times it hits and so on...

Spyfu is a great free site for digging up this type of info

cheers

 

There's nothing you can do about it, just try to overtake him again or move on to a different product.

 

this is why direct linking campaigns are not worth the effort. You have just engaged yourself in a war with another affiliate. Get one step ahead of your competition and start using your own sites and content. You will save more money and conv rate will be much higher

 

If your keyword is trademarked then you can stop someone from using it. Their is a big lawsuit with American Airlines trying to stop anyone from using their name in adwords. The outcome of this case will set the precedent.

 

Do Google monitor the duplicate ad copy?

 

They monitor everything in the ads but I doubt they monitor for dupes, as the one paying the most is the only one that will get shown. You won't see 2 identical ads in a search result, just the one that's paying the most.