Google Adwords Scam or Savior??

Ok,

I have to ask.

Is click fraud such a problem with google that it can severely cramp sales?. The reason I pose the question is that I tried adwords for the hosting service which I run. Now we are very competitive price wise and with what we offer.

So I run around $500 worth of adwords for the day today and receive around about 380 clicks through to our site. First thing I notice is that abour 60% are from google content pages not from the actual searches etc. Then I realise that for that $500 i've not even picked up 1 client.

And finally I check my mail inbox to find that out of380 odd clicks that I received not one person even sent a comment or a question or a request of any sort.

Now I know statistically that 380 clicks is not exaclty alot but I would have expected to at least pick up a single client out of it and failing that maybe at the minimum a few email enquires etc.

Now I know its a competitive business but we offer competitive plans (starting at about 4.00per month for 100meg space and 4gig bandwidth). So we are not priced out of the amerket and stay competitive etc.

So I'm really dissapointed with the addwords response and since most of these clicks came from the content side of things I'm wondering if this is just people clicking on their own links on their own sites etc. It really makes me wonder wether adwords is all that it is cracked up to be.

Would love to hear some opinions for my rant

cheers

...I'm really dissapointed with the addwords response

I tried Addwords for about 8 months over a year ago. All it did was drain my wallet. Now that my site is ranking better I see no reason to spend money on internet marketing. I am going to try other marketing channels however.

Ed

What kind of conversion rate do you have outside of adwords?

I had a friend who owned a site and clicked on his adsense twice to see if they were working. The next day he got banned from Google adsense. So I believe they watch that.

I personally use adwords for a couple of key phrases and get about 4-6% conversion rates. Costing me about $4-6 per sale. Which is worth it to me. I have tried it on a couple of my other sites and the conversion rate was much worse, I have decided that those keyphrases I was choosing were the right ones for those sites.

(URL address blocked: See forum rules)=You+can&l2=beat+our+prices&l3=but+you+can't&l4=beat+our+meat!

Above is the url to a Website that demonstrates Adwords' weaknesses. If the url became separated into several lines with only the top line(s) hyperlinked, then you'll need to copy the entire url and then paste it into the address bar of your browser.

The website presents an image generator to the user ("Make your own Bar-B-Q Sign"), whereby the user inserts words into the form and thereby generates one of several chosen images, each one picturing a sign that portrays the words that the user had entered. A brilliant website which also uses Google Adsense.

On the site, you will see several Google ads dealing with electronic function generators and emergency standby power generators. Obviously Google picked-up the word "generator" from the text "More Image Generators".

So if we were selling, say, emergency standby generators, we'd be getting clicks from visitors to a totally unrelated site whose visitors would be so impressed with the image generator that they would feel morally obligated to give the website operator "a few clicks" in the same way that one might feel compelled to drop a quarter into the cup a homeless individual playing a harmonica in a subway station.

There's a website that presents an image generator to the user ("Make your own Bar-B-Q Sign"), whereby the user inserts words into the form and thereby generates one of several chosen images, each one picturing a sign that portrays the words that the user had entered. A brilliant website which also uses Google Adsense.

On the site, you will see several Google ads dealing with electronic function generators and emergency standby power generators. Obviously Google picked-up the word "generator" from the text "More Image Generators".

So if we were selling, say, emergency standby generators, we'd be getting clicks from visitors to a totally unrelated site whose visitors would be so impressed with the image generator that they would feel morally obligated to give the website operator "a few clicks" in the same way that one might feel compelled to drop a quarter into the cup of a homeless individual playing a harmonica in a subway station.

Good point Egol! Very good point. You should make sure you are converting well before adwords or you can spend a pretty penny and not make anything.

For hosting keywords I suggest using Googles search listings only for now. The adsense publishers don't convert as well and you have less trouble if you don't use them right away.

Also keep your CPC down as low as possible, write a killing description and you can rank higher than other players who pay much more. I love Google Adwords because it isn't just ranked on money but who clicks your ad.

I am sure Gary will have some thoughts on this. He probably does the most Adwords advertising of any of us here...

Hosting services are very competitive, I would think AdWords brought a lot of people to your site that wouldn't have been there before - my guess is if they are serious about buying they are checking out competition and if your site grabbed thier attention they will be back and you will convert sales. Has your number of "add to favorites" increased?

Thats very true, even if you can afford to be on top 3 you can steal alot of people if you have a nice description and a catchy title.

Test some ads with different description and titles and see which work the best.

Once i worked with a lady that used to spend 15k per months on ads and didnt sale enough to cover the expenses and when i grab the project i realize that she was spending alot of money on very general keywords, so what i did is turn than and spend the money on the different and more targeted keywords. So in conclusion a high traffic keyword that cost 10 times more cant be the best option becuase of the cost and the competition than some targeted keywords that can cost a very little and at the same time are more targeted and that can increase your increase your conversions.

The reason why most of your clicks didn't come from searches is because the less you bid on your keywords the lower down in the search results your ad's going to be. If you were to bid, say, ten cents on the word "Insurance" you'd come up on page 10,000 subsequent to a search. Bid two-hundred dollars a click (yes, they do bid that much) and watch how your search results improve.

So you're going to get a lot of hits from content sites, and most of these sites either aren't related to your web-hosting business (such as a site that contains text such as "I was hosting a forum on the web and............." or are scam sites that use special software to automatically click on links each time a visitor hits the page.

Then you have the "Get Paid to Surf The Web" scam, whereby ads are placed in newspapers offering "jobs" whereby people are paid to go to certain sites and click on their Adsense ads. The sites are supercharged with words such as "insurance" and "investment broker" and "refinancing", words that companies have paid as much as TWO-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY dollars per-click for. The criminals then rake-in fifty-percent of Google's take and pay the peon whom they've hired something on the order of a dollar.

The average click for insurance is $16.95-21.27 - Clicks aren't as expensive as they used to be. Again you can beat competitors easily just by having a killing description that converts well. Then you can lower your CPC and get more out of the buck.

1) That's expensive for content network. You can catch longtail words and bring that down substantially

2) for 380 visitors you need to have some form of action tracking to see where they are going and track behaviour. Chances are you have a crappy web site and it won't convert because a) wrong visitors, b) wrong design to funnel the right visitors to the $$$.

Adwords is a highly tuned market and it is dominated by people with a great deal of knowledge and experience in making it pay. If you just do a 'toe in the water' exercise then you are almost guaranteed to be badly disappointed.

So either take it seriously and learn everything you can before you try again or else leave it well alone. If you are concerned about the click fraud then you can always set the option just to get clicks only from Google search pages.