Dave, I’ve been reading about various tricks that marketing folks use to gain more traffic for their Web site through paid advertising and just came across deceptive keyword bidding, but I’m not clear what that really is. Can you clarify for me, please? For that matter, I don’t fully understand how keyword bidding is done on Google AdWords anyway.
This is a common puzzle because there appear to be two classes of people that advertise through Google AdWords, those that bid on a half-dozen keywords or so, and those that bid on thousands of keywords at a time, if not hundreds of thousands.
But let’s start at the beginning. When you see Google AdSense advertisements show up on a page — as you do just above on this page — Google’s ad engine has ascertained a primary topic and keyword phrases for a given Web page (or, in the case of a search engine results page, it’s keyed off the actual search terms used). Google has a massive storehouse of advertisements each of which is associated with some number of keywords, as few as one or as many as thousands of combinations.
Further, keywords can be exact matches, phrase present matches and broad matches. For example: [camera lens] is an exact match and that advertisement will only be shown when someone types in the search “camera lens”. Not “lens for camera” not “nikon camera lens”. A phrase match looks like “camera lens” and matches “nikon camera lens”, but not “lens for camera”, and, finally, camera lens will match the search “repair lens for nikon camera”.
For each keyword associated with an advertisement, advertisers bid, that is, they indicate how much they’re willing to pay for each click-thru resulting from that ad being displayed. As you might expect, the bidding required to be a top ad listing for a keyword like “buy digital camera” is going to be quite a bit higher than for [best preschool in Omaha].
So we’ve gotten through the basics of AdWords. Now let’s talk about deceptive bidding. If you agree that those ads can be pretty effective — and they are to a remarkable degree — then it stands to reason that someone advertising would want to have their ads show up for as many relevant keywords as possible. If you’re selling spyware removal software, for example, you’d want to have your ad show up for as many related searches and on as many spyware-related pages as possible.
Now, what happens if the company advertising spyware removal software starts bidding on keywords that aren’t related to their product, in the interest of garnering more traffic. Not a great strategy and AdWords self-corrects because ads will be dropped if their display-to-click ratio goes too low. But… what if a company bids on keywords that are for a competitor?
My colleague Wayne Porter of Revenews brings up just this problem in his recent article Deceptive Term Bidding in the Spyware Space, wherein he decries that “it causes us deep concern when we have to explain to customers that the program they thought was ours, and purchased from a deceptive ad, had nothing to do with us at all. This is not just trademark infringement this is COMMON SENSE. If an ad says Find Peanuts here and you click through and they sell you motor oil…well you get the idea.”
The gist of Wayne’s complaint is that when people searched Google for his company’s domain name spywareguide.com that an advert for Yahoo’s free anti-spyware toolbar popped up through AdWords and that it was somehow misleading for Yahoo to have an ad tied to their domain name.
But I cannot agree with him. First off, Yahoo and other spyware companies might well have bid on broad terms like “spyware” but bid very low, so that a search for “spywareguide” or “spyware guide” wouldn’t show Yahoo on the first page yet show up near the top on more narrow searches like “spywareguide.com”, but in the general, there’s no trademark violation and I just don’t see where there’s any conflict or deceptiveness.
Trademark-wise, Google no longer prohibits bidding on competitor’s trademark symbols and brand identity anyway. According to Google’s trademark policy, “As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad content that they choose to use. We encourage trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with our advertisers.”
Don’t get me wrong. There are clearly cases when companies have deceptive advertisements and are exploiting the system (an example would be if a third party manufacturer bid on “ipod case” and then had an advertisement that presented themselves as Apple Computer itself). But I think Wayne’s tilting at the wrong windmill here, Quixotically.
can i use my competitors name as a “keyword” for Google adwords. i mean when somebody searches my competitors company through Google, i want to display my ad there as well. is it legal as far a adwords is concerned or not???
JK, it’s hard to say as Google is very closed about the impact of deceptive keyword bidding. My guess: if it’s easy enough for them to connect the dots, yes, it could have an adverse affect on quality score too.
Winsome, a “widget” is a short block of code that you can paste onto your Web site that acts as a self-contained little mini-window that offers up weather, sports scores, your latest tweets on Twitter, the YouTube video of the day, etc etc etc. Anything goes, it just refers to the mini-window generated by code.
Hey, thanks for making all this adsense stuff make more sense for a newbie like me. Now what’s a widget?
Is there any impact of quality score on deceptive keyword bidding?
Hello This is Colonel Les Hotte who has been benched or else I just don’t know all the rules correctly. Can you tell me what I am doing wrong I have 3 clicks in the pase month. Please give me some feedback? The Colonel
Hi, Dave: I’ve enjoyed reading your material and now I have a question for you. Are you aware of any software that helps to monitor and prevent keyword bidding on trademarked terms? If so, would you kindly drop me a line? My company needs to have this type of facility.
Many thanks.
Steve Watkins
Los Angeles, CA
I have no way of knowing what you were doing before you got into trouble, Howard, so I can’t answer your query about what’s going on. Good luck to you, but this is another reason why playing with SEO “techniques” can be very risky…
We were advertising on google adwords-Doogen is a health and fitness search engine. They wanted us to have a square id for weight loss, lose weight, and certain supplements(keywords)
We requested acception and it went through however a few months later they have terminated the account and will not reinstate us. We cannot be granted a square id nor do we need one. We do not sell anything but offer a search. Can you provide me with any suggestions. I have emailed them with no success.
Wayne, you’re right. It’s hard to imagine a legitimate reason that someone would bid on the domain of a competitor’s Web site, not even a product name, but a domain.
Except… except that Google’s terms of service state that it’s not illegal or any sort of violation (even if your domain name is a registered trademark). If I want to bid on “msdn.microsoft.com” as a keyword for this Weblog, there’s nothing stopping me from doing it, and as long as my content is at least vaguely related to the keyword, nothing particularly troubling or unethical about it either.
Now, if a porn site bid on, say, “world series” or “superbowl”, that’d be a bit more questionable, but that’s not what we are talking about here.
dave,
thanks for your take on the keyword bidding. However I dont think it was broadmatching. The term did not show up when i searched for “spywareguide” only when i searched for “spywareguide com” Note the lack of a period. it was a space.
Still not sure if that would be part of the broad match, but either way the confusion it causes is becoming a real problem.
regards,
Wayne
The most flagrant deceptive keyword bidder is E-bay. I have a friend with a very unique website and product. Amazingly after choosing her kewords and getting them online, within two days, E-bay was using the same keywords, despite the fact that if you go to E-bay and try to find the items, they do not exist. Personally, if you aren’t selling it and it isn’t a synonym to an item you sell, you should be in violation and delisted.