Second Tier PPC Engines Archives

Discovery, Search Engine Watch Forums Moderator, shared with us a 2006 Test Run On Kanoodle. The results were less than positive, to say the least. Discovery funded the Kanoodle account with $300, ran the behavioral and context ad features and watched it go. Four hours later, the $300 was completely depleted by 588 clicks. The 588 clicks resulted in "99.86% immediately bounced back out of the site." There was one conversion, which turned out to be fraud or fake.

Discovery ran the same keyword on other networks and realized a 15% conversion over the past 6 months.

Kanoodle did contact Discovery to review the account and help. But will Discovery give them an other chance?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Boy, do some people hate them and their traffic. Others don't see the big deal. There is a thread on SEW Forums about click fraud and second tier PPC companies that has been going on for well over a year now. The creator of the thread, posts some data in regards to the companies whose traffic is rampant with click fraud. The rest of the thread follows with people giving input on the data and their own experience. The result: People hate second tier search engines. They simply don't trust them to not fraud them out of their money. Why so bad, you might ask?

Well one of the members Nintendo, posted some of his log file as to why he believes some second tier engines are nothing but 100% click fraud. You can see the stats here. It doesn't take a scientist to tell that all the clicks come from one domain. But this is a simplistic view.

One of the owners of these operations (Infoseek) came to post on the forums to protest the abuse he was getting from the thread creator. He had to say:

I operate an affiliate & partner program I have canceled allot of members for cheating, I do not condole cheaters. there for your opinion of my site is an under statement. I have spent a lot of time on my website and my scripts get
updated every 2 months with anti cheat software. ...it is unfair for you to quote me as a fraud farm. ...You have caused my allot of pain & suffering.

Apparently he was pissed!

To be fair, not all second tier search engines are click fraud wastlelands with crookbots running around. There are some that are fair and deliver meaningful traffic. People are working to make it a better oppourtunity to advertise in. Places like Kanoodle, Searchfeed, and Verizon Superpages are some places I think doing that already.

Interesting thread to check out on a Friday - SEW Forums

A thread at Digital Point forums named Searchfeed.com Experience sums up several people's experience with SearchFeed.com. The review is primarily of publishers explaining that most of the clicks are values between 1 to 2 cents, but that SearchFeed.com is honest and pays on time. Aaron Wall, in the thread, explains that with the second and third tier PPC companies, you need to be more worried about click fraud, as an advertiser.

The overall impression I received from the thread was that people were happy with SearchFeed and they just hope it paid out more.

Forum discussion at Digital Point Forums.

Last week Barry Schwartz (RustyBrick) was so generous to invite me to be a guest author at the Search Engine Roundtable. I gladly accepted and he made a formal announcement.

From time to time you will see me writing about spontaneous topics related with what is happening in our Search Marketing industry and the forums. Primarily, you will hear from me on the Hispanic and Latin America issues that need to be covered, which ususally don't get much coverage in detail. I also enjoy local search and link building tactics as well as good pizza.

In this first blog I want to point out a thread in SearchEngineWatch Forums called "Opinions on Quepasa.com PPC for Hispanic Market?" because it is so important to get the facts straight from forum Members about this PPC provider in the Hispanic market before you do a test with them.

For some time their business model seems to be getting companies to do tests, tests and more tests but are they reaching any conversions or ROI objectives for the advertisers? Should you invest $500 with QuePasa's Standard Package, please do read this thread first. At least you know what to expect.

There seems to be a some good talk lately about PPC engines and the many factors surrounding there use. Which results in better conversions Google or Overture? Why does it take so long to list an ad in Overture? Which engine brings in more traffic? Lots of talk on Overture and Google, enough to make your head spin several times before coming back down. A good thread on SEW forums discusses the various other PPC search engines that are available to marketers. When it comes down to it, Google and Overture take up a good portion of the market for PPC, but there are so many other oppourtunities out there for attacking another vertical that could result in similar traffic.

Chris Sherman posted on a recent article that talks about the various second tier PPC engine out there, and reasons why these low-cost alternatives can provide comparable ROI and conversions similar to Google or Overture. At the last SES conference I attended I quite remember the zeal and tenacity of the particular second tier search engines advertising themselves in the exhibit hall. They obviously want your business, and are very willing to prove what they claim they can do. It was encouraging to see, and especially chat with representatives about their technology and if they covered the verticals I was looking for. One thing I wished more PPC engines had was breath of subject areas to advertise in and more information on their traffic sources. One specializes in Business, another in Shopping, another in Finance. But as pointed out in this thread, the specific specialities of the engines help to focus on your target market and help improve conversions on your site. They stick to what they know. So much so that one site in particular list over 642 Pay Per Click Search Engines here. You might not even known there were that many, but it means a good amount of oppourtunity.

Some of the members expressed opinions about the quality of conversions from second tier search engines. One member said "using smaller engines depends upon your objective". Chicago another SEW forum member argued that "there is no such thing as the second tier as this group is totally reliant upon the "third/fourth tiers" and beyond to serve clicks." There is discussion about conversions on second tier engines, with several members relating to experiences that were less than desirable and others finding good value in the traffic.

Continue discussing Search for Clicks Away from Google and Overture

ProjectPHP, most of you have seen him around at the forums, tipped me off on this. At the end of a thread on click fraud that we covered about a month ago, in the entry named 50% of PPC Clicks are Fraud, we learn more.

In the 3rd page of the thread it says

Netscape's quick Searches, if they are words you bid on, can cause budgets to absolutely blow out, and fast. In your case, it was $1,000 per day. That is a massive ammount to potentially save, and a tip well worth knowing!!

I nice bit of advice to share with you.

Back at the SES San Jose conference in the Search Ads Beyond Google & Overture session, Dan Ballister from FindWhat.com introduced the concept of "pay per call". Today, they announced this, for more information on this service visithere. Elisabeth, super admin at SEW forums, started on thread on this topic named FindWhat Announces Pay-Per-Call Ad Option.

A member over at IHelpYou Forums started a thread named fraudulent clicks today where he discusses how his clicks on his AdSense reports skyrocketed in a single day. Someone was fraudulently clicking on those banner ads and he decided to report it to Google.

Pay Per Click advertisers take click-fraud into account when factoring ROI (return on investment) of the overall campaign. Besides for the obvious cons involved with click fraud, the thread discusses some of the, not so obvious, pros.

"Fortunately on AdWords, it can actually increase your position if it happens on a small scale." Google AdWords looks at two factors when deciding how to position ads. (1) The bid placed by the advertiser and (2) the CTR (click through rate) of that particular ad. So if a bid is lower then an other ad but the CTR of that lower priced ad is much higher, the lower priced ad can come up before the higher priced ad with the lower CTR. So that benefits the advertiser who is paying less for the ad.

Could it have been that the advertiser was the 'fraudster'?

Do Google Search on rustybrick, my trademark. If it does not come up, refresh a few times and you will see the following ad by a competitor I never heard of. They call themselves "superior" to RustyBrick, I doubt that. But to stay on topic...

Is there a way to contact Google about this? Will it matter? Google now allows for competitors to bid on trademarked names, however they will not allow one to place the trademarked name in the ad copy. Fair? It is extremely hard for Google to police this, so they try to make their policies as easy going as possible unless otherwise forced to change them.

Three past posts on this subject can be found at:

• Pay Per Click's Trademark Policies
  
• Trademarked Names & Google AdWords Hits Home
  
• Trademarked Names No Longer Blocked by Google AdWords?
  

Posting this for my own notes but it can't hurt to share. Policies at major search engines on allowing bidding for trademarked keywords range widely, with at least one having no stated policy. Here's a rundown:

Google Inc.
Policy: Had limited the bidding on trademarked keywords upon request of trademark holder; within next several weeks, will no longer do so, but won't allow the use of trademarked terms within the ad itself. Also bans critical ads.
Comment: Says it is changing its policy to better serve users with relevant ads; observers say the move will generate more revenue for the search engine

Yahoo Inc.
Policy: Allows bidding, but screens for editorial relevance
Comment: Will investigate complaints from trademark holders, but allows bidding if ad makes clear what the company does

MSN
Policy: Sells retail brands (e.g. Sears) only to the retailer; sells manufacturer brands, like Sony, to the manufacturer or to retailers. Policy differs for brand names that are also generic terms; for instance, would sell "amazon" to Amazon.com but also to an online travel site selling trips to the Amazon region.
Comment: Yahoo supplies some of MSN's paid listings, but MSN also sells some listings directly.

FindWhat.com
Policy: Allows bidding, but screens for editorial relevance
Comment: "Pepsi is allowed to bid on Coke, just as Pepsi uses Coke's trademark in its TV commercials," says Phillip Thune, chief operating officer and chief financial officer.

Lycos Inc.
Policy: Reviews ads for relevance and generally doesn't allow bidding on a competitor's trademark
Comment: Competitors typically "don't have content relevant to that trademark," says Adam Soroca, who runs the ad-bidding system for searches on lycos.com, hotbot.com and other sites

Kanoodle Inc.
Policy: Doesn't allow advertisers to bid on trademarked terms they don't own
Comment: "An advertiser bidding on listings through Kanoodle must either sell, or provide substantive information on, products linked to that listing on their Web sites," says Lance Podell, president of Kanoodle.

My Source: WSJ.com, WSJ Source: the companies

"We believe the desktop represents a rapidly growing opportunity for paid listings and targeted contextual advertising," said Craig Pisaris-Henderson FindWhat's chairman and chief executive.

FindWhat.com agreed to acquire closely held software provider Comet Systems Inc. for as much as $33.5 million in cash and stock.

Wall Street Journal reported today.