According to the complaint, the “Levitte International” online ad campaign ran from June 1, 2007, through August 18, 2007, and received 202,528 impressions from parked domain pages – placeholder Web pages with auto-generated links related to a pre-determined search keyword or the hosting domain name. (…)

Despite Google’s semantic technology, the complaint states that the ads Levitte placed just didn’t work. Out of the 202,528 impressions* on parked domain pages, Levitte got 668 clicks and zero conversions.

Levitte’s ads also appeared on error pages, through Google’s AdSense for Errors program. With 1,009 impressions, 25 clicks and zero conversions, he had little to show for it.

A commenter named MrWells on Digg writes, “As an advertising company, Google should absolutely be liable for BS ad placement.” Someone else nicknamed KjcDude remarks “I can’t see [Google] loosing this one. The guy really has no ground to stand on.”

Whatever the outcome of this particular case, I think Google’s parked domain ads program is one of the more shady neighborhoods the company got themselves into. On the one hand Google is very careful when considering to add advertisement to some of their services (like ad-free Google News), and their web counterspam team is trying to tell people to add value to webpages… and on the other hand Google themselves profit from and support zero-value pages by domain brokers who occupy large parts of the domain names space.

[Hat tip to Yusef R. and Digg!]

Comments

Industry observers witnessed various lawsuits against Google over the past few years, as litigants made accusations over issues like click fraud and their rankings in the search results.

A recent lawsuit noted by InformationWeek finds Hal K. Levitte suing over his AdWords campaign, which ran in the summer of 2007. Ads that appeared on parked domains and on error pages generated some clicks, but no conversions.

“Levitte spent $136.11 for ads on parked domains and error pages, which works out to 15.3% of his $887.67 ad campaign,” the report said.

Once news of this legal kerfuffle emerged, industry observers weighed in with less than favorable commentary about Levitte’s action.

“So a man got 668 clicks on his ads through one portion of his Google AdWords, and zero conversions,” Andrew Goodman said. “And for that, it’s seen as good enough reason for a lawsuit. Ever heard of testing?”

“Although there is fraud on domain parking, this appears to be another manufactured lawsuit to milk Google for money,” Domain Name Wire said. “Only $136 worth of ads on parked domains is hardly a fair sample size. Perhaps he was advertising for a highly competitive topic with known high click prices.”

Legal keywords like ‘mesothelioma lawyer’ tend to merit substantially higher prices than most biddable possibilities. It seems highly unlikely a court will judge for this plaintiff for failing to be competitive in the market, but sometimes judges make odd decisions. We expect Google to do the usual ‘defend vigorously’ thing in the case.

The option to keep one’s ads off of AdSense for Domains hasn’t exactly received the same level of promotion as Google’s Site & Category Exclusions, which received a post of explanation on the Inside AdWords blog.

Richard Ball at Apogee Web Consulting pointed out the option to exclude ads from parked domains, tucked away in the Google AdWords help.

“You can help prevent parked domain sites from showing your ads by using the Site and Category Exclusion tool. Before you do, however, we recommend that you review the performance information on the Page Types tab to make sure that you won’t be missing out on valuable traffic,” says Google.

Ball isn’t convinced of that value. If it’s so wonderful, why hide it, he wondered:

How does Google explain the decision to detail clicks from individual domains on their pay per click advertising network but to hide the individual parked domains from advertisers? Over nine months ago, they said (emphasis mine):

Currently, AdSense for domains statistics are collectively reported, but we are working to give you site-by-site level statistics soon.

After almost a year, they still haven’t organized this information for advertisers!

With 916 clicks from parked domains, out of 14,278 impressions generated, Ball wanted to know why Google would be keeping the identities of these domains away from AdWords clients. He wasn’t impressed with what his server logs revealed.

“I was stunned to see where they came from,” he said. “To borrow a phrase from renowned domainer, Frank Schilling, it will “blow your hair back” to see the high quantity but very low quality of these domain names.”

Among these domain names: 555sss.com, sexpaty.tv, zfotoz.com, and others. Several domains in the dot-cn top-level domain, meaning a Chinese registry, also appeared in his log data as sources for ad clicks.

“I honestly cannot believe that Google turns a blind eye to this sort of garbage traffic on their own advertising network. They claim to sift through their log files to help prevent fraud. Don’t they see this traffic?” Ball asked.

We think that’s a great question. How about it, Google? What’s the criteria for low quality traffic? Do parked domains have an exclusion from having their traffic graded this way? Are advertisers being penalized with low quality scores when their ads show up on AdSense for Domains?

Inquiring webmasters want to know. Unless that corporate mission of organizing the world’s information and making it useful has an intentional blind spot regarding parked domains, why not show advertisers in their AdWords reports which domains send along those clicks?

With this in mind, Google’s decision to limit individual site exclusions makes more sense. If they showed webmasters all the parked domains sending clicks, and webmasters dumped them into Site Exclusions as fast as possible, Google could be out lots of PPC ad revenue each month.

Google’s recent click declines have been attributed to weeding out low quality traffic. It seems their paying AdWords customers would be helpful in doing so by excluding parked domain clicks.

Perhaps, just a little too effective for comfort.

Your Search Ad: No Search, But You Paid Google

“Google is billing advertisers for paid search clicks when, in fact, no searches have taken place,” Ball said in a blog post at the Apogee Weblog. “This is click fraud.”

Despite this straightforward accusation, and the details that followed in Richard’s post, Google has not responded to a request for comment about it. Perhaps the folks who could respond are too busy watching shares of GOOG nuzzle the underbelly of $700.

Richard’s post needs a little explaining, as the activity taking place is a little complex. Someone types in a domain into a browser address bar, iowagop.com in Richard’s test example, and ends up at a parked domain page.

That page contains a list of “hot links.” Clicking one of the list’s items, like Iowa Straw Poll, brings up another page titled, “Search results for: iowa straw poll.”

The ads on the page come from Google’s Ads for Domains program, via a company called DomainSponsor, owned by Oversee.net. For this example, there are links to Airline Tickets, Employment, and Car Insurance, among others.

Richard considers this ‘fake searches click fraud’:

When did a search occur? Is clicking on a link equivalent to typing keywords into a search box? No, this is a fake search. Google classifies these kinds of paid clicks as search clicks because they occur on a parked domain that has a search box on the site. That’s fraud – click fraud, distribution fraud, syndication fraud.

In a followup conversation with WebProNews, Richard said he thinks advertisers aren’t recognizing when this happens, because referring URLs for these ads are masked, by routing them through searchportal.information.com. Richard’s experiment yielded referrers ending with a string identified as a query.

These URLs, when clicked, go back to the parked domain. There is no search taking place, as Richard found.

Here’s how he did it. When buying AdWords keywords for the test campaign, he had the content network turned off. His ads should only show up on Google and on search network sites. They show up on a parked domain because those pages have search *boxes* on them.

Google isn’t hiding this; it’s in their AdWords help regarding ad targeting on the Google Network:

Depending on the design of the site, a parked domain site will be classified as either a search site or a content site. That means your ads may show on parked domain sites if your campaign is opted in to the search or content networks.

If Google says it’s part of the search network, the parked domain’s ad clicks become paid search clicks. A site publisher looking at Richard’s example likely won’t agree, as no search ever took place.

It’s confusing enough, and it even seems to have top search expert Danny Sullivan a little baffled, judging by his August 2007 comments on a Search Engine Land piece regarding the ability to opt out of AdSense For Domains completely:

It’s important to understand that some people think they’ve opted out of AdSense For Domains if they opt out of contextual ads altogether. Not so. Do that, and you’re opted out of paid links on parked domains that people browse and find, by clicking. But if someone does an actual search there (search boxes are almost always provided), then you’ll get traffic from parked domains that way, if you’re accepting traffic from the search network. It’s confusing and one reason why I’ve long wanted Google to make AdSense For Domains an entirely separate purchase.

As Richard demonstrated, searches aren’t triggering this traffic. It’s coming from a direct entry in an address bar, and clicking on predetermined links. No one’s entering a query in a search box.

There is one more thing that Richard thinks makes the whole process look bad. In the referring URL we discussed earlier, and the query at the end of it, the referrer shows the query as ‘Iowa Straw Poll’.

Someone might capitalize Iowa for their search, but Richard doesn’t believe anyone will bother capitalizing Straw or Poll when they type in this string.

“This is an artificial search – Google and DomainSponsor are making it look in server logs like a search is happening,” said Richard. ” But, clearly users are clicking on pre-defined links. That’s what’s bogus.”

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