Hello

According to Google's income statement to investors (on the Google website), Google earned over $6 billion from advertising during 2005 ($6,065,003,000 to be precise), and has earned over $4.6 billion in the first two quarters of this year. My estimate is that over 95 percent of this comes from AdWords; other sources claim 98 percent. This means Google's AdWords counting technology was responsible for at least $5.7 billion last year.

I am interesting in hearing from anyone who has spent money with Google who may have complained and :-

Received a refund ?
Received an admission that they were incorrectly charged ?
Received no response whatsoever ?
Did not receive a satisfactory reply ?


I am planning to launch the largest law suit possible against Google for what I believe is their fraudulent AdWords activities.

With the size of the revenues above there must be thousands of people /companies who cannot reconcile their clicks/results against what Google has charged them.

If you are using Google Adwords and happy then fine and you need not participate in this discussion.

For clarification I am not referring to click fraud.

My company is spending in excess of $20,000 a month with Google Adwords and on every occasion we have queried the statistics and charges we have received refunds.

I have emails from Google admitting they are having technical problems.

I believe that the entire Google Adwords premise is fraudulent.

I am able to prove it but of course I would not wish to prejudice my case by providing any further comments on a public medium.

If you believe that you have had similar experiences and wish to provide copies of communication between Google and yourself then please contact me.

Regards
Jon

I'm not sure I follow you're argument at all. Your premise is that because Google is making a lot of money they must be doing something wrong.

I'm sure they make mistakes. Everyone does, but that doesn't mean the system is fraudulent. You said on every occasion where you've had a problem Google has refunded you. So what's the problem?

If you think AdWords is a fraud don't use it.

Hi,

I optimize Google AdWords campaigns for my clients. Sometimes they receive huge number of clicks but no sale or sign up.

I personally emailed them once and they said sometimes just a special users clicks on your ad several times and Google charges you for each click.

I told them that what if my competitor click on my ads to kick me out of the game? and this is the answer I received: "no answer"

Paul Benzer,
< create a signature >

Originally Posted by vangogh

I'm not sure I follow you're argument at all. Your premise is that because Google is making a lot of money they must be doing something wrong.

I'm sure they make mistakes. Everyone does, but that doesn't mean the system is fraudulent. You said on every occasion where you've had a problem Google has refunded you. So what's the problem?

If you think AdWords is a fraud don't use it.

Are you the Google Guy?

Funny, but no. If I'm not mistaken I think Matt Cutts was outed as Google Guy, though I could be wrong about that.

My point is that just because Google profits from AdWords doens't mean it's a scam. Do fraudulent clicks happen? Absolutely, but the majority of clicks are still legitiimate. I do realize that there are problems with the system, but most people can do well with AdWords if they learn to understand the system.

In your case above just because someone clicks and doesn't buy or sign up doesn't mean the click itseslf was fraudulent. It could be a result of poorly chosen keywords or directing the ad to the wrong page. The campaign itself could do everything right and still the site won't convert that visitor. There could be problems with the site itself. Fraufulent clicks are one possible reason, but just because someone isn't successful with AdWords doesn't mean AdWords can't work or is a scam.

The OP here said that whenever there's been a problem Google responded by refunding their money. That doesn't sound to me like a premise that's fraudulent. That sounds like a company doing right by their customers.

I do think there are problems with the AdWords system. It's not perfect and there will probably always be fraudulent clicks that make their way through the system. I've never actually seen a perfect system myself though.

I do think blaming someone else just because you're not having the success you want is a pointless battle. I don't know the specifics of Jon's case above so I can't comment on his issue one way or another. I just wasn't following his point about why the premise behind AdWords was fraudulent. Seems to me like a lot of people have profited from it.

ADWORDS,
My adwords increased from 40 clicks per month to over 1800 for 1 week. Explain that?? I advised Google and they said customers could have clicked to justify the increase.. NOT!!! I really think my competitor or their host clicked my adword driving the clicks out the roof.. to run me out of Google adwords.. I will not pay the 4200.00 in charges for just 1 week.. anyone can see the problem.. I had no increase in phone traffic and Google , being able to read the IP address should be able to see the same IP address click the numberous times to drive up the cost.. I thought Google has ways to prevent the abusers.. I can see where this would involve a class action lawsuit...... especially if all the users got the same dead answer I got.. I reported this to my bank as fraud and has the card stopped before the charges took plane..

Pissed!!

That does sound like an example of click fraud. I suppose it's possible somehow if you made some big changes to things, but it doesn't sound likely that the clicks would increase that much.

A couple of questions though. Did you place a cap on how much you're willing to spend each month or day? You can easily limit your spend through AdWrods. Tell Google you're only willing to spend $200/month and you shouldn't get charged more. Similarly you can put a limit on the spend for each day. Things like that aren't Google's fault.

Also how often do you manage the account. If you were set up to show in position 3 say for a keyphrase and then the the top two ads pulled out of the bidding and your ad moved to the #1 position you would get a lot more clicks.

Do you have the keyphrases set as 'exact match,' phrase match,' or 'broad match.' Each will display your ads for different terms and could mean more or less clicks.

If you haven't changed anything to the ads then it does seem like a sudden increase in clicks, but there are explanations especially if you made some changes.

You might also want to get some click fraud prevention software. The software can help track things and provide some evidence to help get your money back.

I did have the limit set to 25.00 per day.. but the amount still showed 4,200 some odd dollars. I stopped all transactions on my credit card due to this. I surely didnt want to be charged 4k for something I know is wrong. Also I have paused all google ads until this is cleared up..

Just a little history .. My average was about 200-300 per month. I like google and use the engine everytime I search.. one question I do have is how can these website builders get their clients at the top with very little CPC. I had one website designer saying he could guarantee me the top 3 for a set fee of 99.00 per month.. I felt there was something fishy and didnt do it.. but I do see these very small shops who are at the top and I know they cant be paying 1k per month for this ..I have read where some are tricking the system and I believe maybe this is how it has affected me or possibly someone else with to many clicks..

The amount of clicks does sound like something was going on that was fraudulent, but you never know. I'm surprised that the account could get up to $4,200 though with a daily budget set at $25. That would cap things at $750 or so if my math is right.

I think you're right about not trusting that firm with the $99 promise. I can guarantee you #1 rank too, but the terms would be meaningless. How about the term 'glaborel' I just checked Google and found no results. So by typing it here and maybe one more time (glaborel) will probably mean this thread will rank for the term soon after this page is indexed. We can all check in a week or two and see if I'm right. No one can really guarantee any rankings though. If someone does don't believe them.

That's part of the idea though in how smaller companies can rank so well sometimes. It depends on how competitive the keywords are.

I don't think it's about tricking the system. But there are ways to learn how it works and make it work better for you. It's hard to be able to say anything more specific without know more details about which keyword and which ad is ranking well, but there are more factors than simply the bid in determining what ad gets shown where.

And it is always possible that though a firm seems small they are spending a few thousand a month for the ads. If they spend $1000 and generate $2000 from the ads they'd certainly contnue to spend that much again the next month.

I was totally wrong! Google was very helpful clearing things up.. The 4k was my complete totals from Day 1 doing business with them. I should have paid attention to the date range

Barry

Glad to hear it all worked out Barry. I know it's easy to jump to a conclusion sometimes and it's understandable. Just happy it all worked out.

I feel Google is making huge profits because they are doing something right. If they were a scam the bottom would have fell out long ago. The only way to make profits like that is to have returning customers. If everyone gets ripped off nobody will return.

Ron I agree. I know the system isn't perfect and I know honest people lose out, but I don't think Google is out there trying to rip people off. It's in their best interest to make the best system they can.

Maybe they do some things to skew it all in their favor, but so would any business.

This biggest problem with Adwords is Google continues to show your ads in more and more places using their broadmatch. In addition, instead of letting the market decide the value of keyword, now they perform quality scores. They control the whole price of the market. Here's the worst part, because so many people have spammed their index and they are not deleting the spammed listings (believe me I report them like no tomorrow) it causes people to click ads. As more and more people are forced to use PPC advertsing because Google can't "take out the trash" we all pay the price. Google sucks, I can't wait for their fall from grace. If I was a shareholder I'd have been out a long time ago. They can diversify all they want, when you're on top there's only one way to go. Staight down. Google was great years ago, no it's just garbage.

Kim, you do realize you don't have to use broadmatch. If you think the ads are shown too often and in too many places with it don't use it. If you write a good ad and get a good CTR and have a good quality score then your average price for the ad will actually go down.

The things you describe as bad are actually good things if used right.

As far as spam goes just because you think something is spam doesn't automatically make it spam. Maybe it is, but for the most part the resutls I get at Google are generally good. Not perfect, but generally just as good as any of the major search engines. I'm usually able to fins what I'm looking for at any of the engines.

No one is forced to use PPC advertising. And many who use it do well with it. More often than not when I hear people complaining about AdWords not working it had less to do with the system and more to do with not using the system to it's fullest.

Kim I obviously don't know you and I don't want to imply anything, but your post comes across more about being angry that you haven't done well with Google and AdWords than real problems with either.