It is not very often that I go on a rant about a company that I was so vigilant with my support in the past but there are a lot of disturbing things going on in the Google camp and I am suspending setting up any Adwords accounts for my clients as a result and directing their business to Yahoo and Bing.

As one of the consultants of this company I feel it is my responsibility to look after the best interests of my clients and I am not confident promoting the use of a Google Adwords campaign is in ANY business owners best interest.

A bit of history… My last blog post of 2009 I expressed the results of an indexing study we did where the results suggested Google was purposely burring the links of legit companies  deep in the search engine result pages of relevant searches. Basically, the study suggested that if you were a legit business with a lot of content on your website you were being buried so far in search results you had to pony up for an Adwords campaign if you had any hope of being seen buy the customers you need to keep the doors open.  (AKA the monetization of search results)

As a result of that article, Google canceled our company Adsense account 30 days later stating we were a threat to their advertisers. Seems Google does not like it when marketing companies are bad mouthing them… No big deal I thought… The pittance we made from the ads was not worth the real estate on our company website so we deleted their scripts and wiped our hands of Google ads with good riddance…

Then we started to see something else we have never seen Google do before…

Google has recently been “luring” unsuspecting customers to it’s Adwords advertising program offering $100 gift coupons. A free $100!! Who would not take this bait! Customers would present these little gems and ask us to set up Adwords accounts for them…

And some set up accounts for themselves… only to come to us in total horror asking us for help.

Well I am going to beg every reader, PLEASE DO NOT set up an Adwords account with them. It will be something you will come to regret.

First, they camouflage your payment options during the sign-up process so you end up having a post-pay account… Meaning, they will run your ads and then bill you once you have received the clicks..

Problem is, once the account is set up, there is no way to cancel the account. In all fairness of keeping this article as accurate as possible, we did find a way to cancel pre-pay accounts but not post pay. Google states there is a way to cancel a post pay account in the help forum but when you follow the instructions posted in the help file, the link to “cancel” your account does not exist. And neither does Google Customer service.

You can have a credit balance, never served a single ad with them, and you can not cancel your account. If you are not computer savvy enough to figure out Awords you will just keep racking up the charges for ads unknowingly while Google just keeps billing your card…. Day after day after day after day… And if you try to call them.. you cant. Google is a multi-billion dollar company and they do not have a single phone number you can call if you need help. Trying to find a link to submit an email is virtually impossible and they never get back to you.

And would you also believe there is no way to change your billing options from post pay to pre pay? When trying to research how to remove a bank card from a Google account we found the only way to remove a card is to submit a new one…

It is a little hard to believe a company like Google can not put the ability to change the way you want to  pay for your adds in your account.. and you can not cancel that account to set up a new one with the payment option the way YOU want to pay. Ethical behavior? Not even close.

So my company will no longer be recommending Google Adwords accounts to clients. In fact, we should have done this sooner as some studies are showing 18% of clicks on Google are fraudulent. Last year I wrote an article about the subject. You can read it by clicking here. There are also reports of Google being sued by advertisers because of these fraudulent clicks.

Consider this as well… How much does it cost you when your competitors click your ads only to deplete your monthly budget so their adds do not have to compete with yours??? Think it does not happen, think again.

I am finding it very hard to find anything I like about Google and their pay-per-click advertising business model anymore. I am also finding it hard to support a company that I feel is very unethical in the way they do business. For example, they sell their operating system for mobile devices to companies like Motorola and then shortly after completing the contract Google introduces a mobile device that is in direct competition to Motorola and other smart phone producers. As an industry response to this,  Apple fired a shot over the bow of Google and purchased a company to get into the paid advertising business… (I commend Steve Jobs for this decision and I really do wish Apple my best.)

Other reasons there is no love lost

As the company SEO specialist I also frequently use the Google webmaster tools setting up accounts for clients so they can track the performance of their websites in Google.

The dashboard and the functionality it provides is a complete joke. It just does not work. The information they give you is dreadfully inaccurate yet I read article after article telling me how “sophisticated” the Google algorithm is. If Google is so great at all things concerning the serving of information, why cant they even find all the links to a website??? Well because some of them are not relevant they say… Relevant to who???  They will even say they have not found them YET!

Interesting… I can do a search for rubber dog crap and get the following result:

Results 1 – 10 of about 2,520,000 for rubber dog crap. (0.36 seconds)

But Google can not tell me where all the links to my website are??? They can give me 2,520,000 results for rubber dog crap though…. 2 and a half million??? Really.. Think about that, two point five MILLION results for rubber dog crap… I think the only “Crap” is in Google search results.

What a joke. If they can not have any decent tools for webmasters or provide accurate information to website owners, how am I to believe Google is on the cutting edge of search technology when our results were very conclusive… Microsoft’s accuracy of indexing is 5 times better!

All the REALLY good SEO’s  know… the Google Algorithm is a complete joke and all the things you need to do to rank well in search results are no more than white-hat exploits of Google’s indexing inadequacies and serving A LOT of Google ads. A little bit of “horn or toad” and a pinch of “shittofbull” and a closed door deal or two and BINGO you are on page one.

Look at the search results… Why are some large companies dominating the first page? Look at their websites. If you are serving A LOT of Google ads you will be boosted to page one because the more clicks Google ads get the more Google makes. Even if that means cutting a few companies in on the deal and putting them on page one. Google wants maximum ad exposure and they do it at the expense of companies that deserve to be on page one because they have the best and most relevant content for the search query.

Well Matt, Eric, and all you other Google gong bangers, the gig is up. This search Ponzi scheme you have been running the last few years is not working and I am not buying into it or serving it to my customers.  Ebay served this flavor before and most of their power sellers walked as a result.

You are taking advantage of your customers, Google WAVE is worthless, your maps give wrong directions, Your browser CHROME is FULL of bugs and crashes constantly, your phone sucks, and I am really having a hard time figuring out what you are really good at??

Wait one thing comes to mind…

Serving a lot of Garbage at the expense of small business owners who are struggling in this economy for the sake of your company profits. As A result, and because I am an avid supporter of small businesses and their owners, I will no longer offer your company ANY support and hopefully my readers will do the same.

July ^5th, 2009

Roy Hunter

http://www.mymarketingcompany.com

Internet marketing is vastly becoming a mandatory choice for businesses wanting to market their goods and services. Through development of a company website and everything else that is required to get your information in front of the customers that matter the most, the solution to internet marketing has become an increasingly complex one.

For many businesses the days of being located on Main Street and having customers that just walk in the front door are gone. Brick and mortar stores are being replaced by cyber-storefronts of companies whose customers will never know where they are located.

The most basic level of internet marketing is your company’s website. It is your Internet storefront and it alone represents your company, its goods and services, to customers you hope, and need, to get. But how do these potential customers find you?

Having a good website is not enough. It could be the best looking site on the Internet but if your customers don’t see it, they don’t see your company. Not only does a company need to market what it is they are selling, now they also need to market their website.

Several options exist for website marketing. They include:

• Placement in organic search results
• Paid placement in search results
• Paid placement on other websites
• Social site networking
• Direct email marketing

For the moment I want to focus on the topics of paid placement in web results and paid placement on other websites.

The paid placement model in search results works like this; if you are the owner of the Widget Manufacturing Company, you can bid for placement at the top of the search results in the sponsored ad section. Your placement in that section, and how close to number one on the list your ad resides, depends on what you are willing to pay the search engine company each time your ad has been clicked by viewers of your ad that are interested in purchasing your widgets. The ad has a limited life depending on how much per month you are willing to spend and how many users click your ad.

For example; if you have an advertising budget for pay-per-click placement of $200 per month and you bid $5 per click to get the number one spot in the paid results, your add can be clicked 40 times that month before it disappears until the next placement cycle begins. If you receive all 40 clicks in the first 3 days of the month, the other 27 days you can not be seen by your customers. In order for you to be seen all 30 days of the month, you will need to increase your ad budget ten fold to maintain that exposure. Suddenly your add budget has increased to an amount that is more than what you are willing to spend each month to acquire customers. Can your business survive when it can only be seen 3 days a month?

Another alarming statistic by Burlingame market researcher Outsell Inc. suggests that click fraud cost merchants $800 million last year and is a significant enough threat that 27% of merchants are cutting back on click-based advertising.

What is click fraud? Click fraud is when a phantom user, which has no interest in your business, clicks on your ad to generate revenue for the ad host or its affiliate. Many affiliate websites that host pay-per-click advertising get a share of the pay-per-click fee your company is charged each time a user clicks your ad. It’s free money to them, your ad budget gets blown, and you still do not have the customers your business needs to survive.

Though pay-per-click advertising is still a very reliable way of getting customers, business owners that opt for this method need to be aware that the potential for fraud is extreme, and an ever increasing problem within that ad placement model exists if your ad is displayed on affiliate sites.

What I recommend to the clients of my marketing company is a mix of pay-per-click advertising,  fixed placement using a paid-to-perform model, and paid subscription ad.

The paid-to-perform model is simple. Your business info is listed on multiple sites free of charge until a user clicks your ad and completes a transaction of which you agree to a fixed or variable commission only if a sale was completed. Most companies offer a commission from 3% to 15% of the sale to the owner of the host website which hosted the ad that generated the sale. The downfall to this model is the lack of a cap you can place on your monthly ad budget, but if every completed transaction resulted in a profitable sale to your business, the ad budget can be built into your margins to cover the cost of the commissions.

If your ad budget is still a concern and prefer your budget be fixed, you can also opt for a subscription placement. Subscription placement works like this; you pay a website a monthly fee to host your advertisement. They are paid upfront and your ad will be displayed constantly, or randomly, to every viewer of that page during the subscription period. Regardless if you get one sale or fifty, you still pay the same price for the placement of that ad.

Needless to say, marketing your website is a complicated matter especially when the survival of your company depends on it. I advise my clients to diversify their online ad budgets to include a mix of all three. It has proven to be the best solution for marketing your company’s website as well as the goods and services your business provides.

Would you like some free marketing help? Post your questions in our forum HERE.