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gOOgle still steal money from peoples without any warn or motivation. Thanks God for existence of other companies.

I have stopped my PPC campaigns after six months. I agree the ROI is abyssmal but it works for placement. Is it better to go for impressions?

The hype is hyperbole.

Nothing new here. Big G's practices are becoming more evident to mainstream users since their ad system is polluted and their push down for natural search results has become evident.

At the end the "Do no evil" motto is no more than a marketing tactic. #FAIL!

As far as I'm concerned, Google stopped long time ago living by its tagline, "Don't be evil".

Can someone explain to me this:

How come if a web page in one's website is listed in the FIRST position for a particular Keyword Phrase on Google Search Results, when used as a LANDING PAGE on Adwords, it costs one an average of between $1.00 and $5.00 per click?

This doesn't make sense at all. Basically Google is saying for natural search your web page is CONTENT RICH and we give it NUMBER ONE on natural Searches, BUT when you use it as a landing page on Adwords, it has a POOR QUALITY SCORE (because us Google we are now making money out of you sucker!).

Also anyone who has been using Adwords for sometime and suddenly stopped the campaigns know that their web site suddenly drops positions on Search Results. In other words, Google is using a "Bribe Approach" where they maintain or improve your Search Results position according to whether you are still running or not your Adwords campaigns!

Obviously, they protest that there is no such a think - are we surprised?

This is very clear if you have a website on the FIRST PAGE of Google Search Results for a particular Keyword Phrase.

Actually my advice is this – if you have a website that’s already on the first page of Google natural Search Results, NEVER start using Adwords UNLESS you are sure that you are going to keep on using Adwords FOR LIFE! You are going to be punished the day you stopped your Adwords Campaigns!

Big G, you are evil and you can't help yourself!

google is a grantor of the content, to provide relevant search results, made it easier for everyone to meberikan information. Yes I think google is now the best among the other

I use independent statistic on my pages which gives me knowledge about visitors and I noticed that the results are better than from Google. First of all this statistics from google is not live. Their statistic shows that a lot of my pages are not visited at all (to encourage me to buy their ppc?). Also it does not show visits when customer uses another search engine to find my pages (does Google want to minimize their functionality?). And a lot more... For example search results of similar pages, promoted in the same way, differs.

The Myth
"Google is all about providing good content to their users."

The Truth
"Google is a massive corporate entity with the worlds largest web farm affiliate program

The Myth
"Googles Business is to provide relevant search results"

The Truth
"Googles business is selling advertising that produces clicks from its affiliate web farm

Google sells it's information and barters it for other services. Recent sales of over 10 million in stock owned by the CIA show that information must flow in directions no one wants to think possible.

As a business that needs profit to survive Google systematically

Penalizes sites that sell links to anyone but google authorized link dealers or googles adsense. Monopolistic practice.

Delivers made for adsense sites over real sites in search results. We all know of these examples. Business 101 I would say?

Encourages repetitive content through its web affiliate program - adsense that would bring keyword advertising to mesh with their search. As pointed out, source material is hidden deep behind levels of paid clicks to the same source.

When Adsense appeared so did their compatriots as mentioned in the article. Perhaps missing are the likes of Mr. Nye who helped create the circular websites of garbage content meant to provide links that pay.

Bottom line, Google is a corporate entity whose business is to drive traffic to sites that pay using its vast web farm affiliates. Anything they do must bring that objective about is business. To think Google is in business to give quality search results is a pathetic attempt to obfuscate their business model into some Disney sponsored fairy tale. A Wall Street corporation is no longer a college project with dreamers at the wheel.

I was one of them and it cost me 10,000 dollars before I realised that my money was going down the drain in clicks that my competitors and Google employees were having fun clicking on.

There's always been the cost of known click fraud to integrate into anyone's business model but this new information perhaps makes that harder to absorb.

BB

"It is possible Google is unaware of WhenU’s pop-up practices ... ."

Part of the problem is that Google has an incentive NOT to be aware. There is a disincentive for Google (and other PPC services) to investigate and stop click fraud because that hurts their own revenue. The professor's points on Chrome are sound. I've thought for some time that the moving impetuous behind the creation of Chrome (rather than Google just supporting firefox) was to boost paid advertising revenue. Firefox extension adblock is something you cannot use on Chrome. One the driving force behind a browser is advertising revenue, other scams creep into the mix as the temptation is too great.

The best is to just not to give google money, ever. PPC advertising is a scam and always has been.

Less than 10% of searches result in a click on advert anyway. That means that almost 90% of the clicks go to the natural search results. Some go to the second page . . .

Your PPC adverts are often too much of a temptation for your competitors.

Good SEO is the best bet, always.

I paused my Google PPC for my safety and security web site because I don't really trust them. I have a small Yahoo PPC going on right now but I mainly spend my time and money on optimization and social marketing.

Excellent article. I think Edelmen's examples are pretty cut and dry. Google must be aware of these kind of practices, but unless they are truly threatened with losing advertisers, why would they make it a priority to fight against something that brings them income and gives an inflated sense of the value of their product?

On the other hand, while many publishers are out to game Google, many advertisers are working the opposite angle, in the sense that click-throughs and and conversions are not the only value of the ads for some advertisers. I help run a movie review site, and many of the ads that appear don't require a click-through or conversion to be effective. Often the information in the ad alone serves the purposes of the advertiser to promote and brand the movie. A click through would be icing on the cake.

From a publishers perspective, the entire Google model is a bit flawed. Publishers work hard crafting content to bring in traffic... just to send it away. Certainly there has to be a better system!