Overture running faux PPC ads?

[SEFL]

A client of mine, Award Kitchen Refacers, noticed that for some reason Google was reporting that their site was being somehow included on the Webshots! site.

Upon looking at their cache, I discovered this:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:TRGBUFvKxNwJ:www.webshots.com/search%3Fquery%3DKitchen%2BIn%2BProcess+awardkitchenrefacers.ca&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7

My client isn't the tech-savvy type and hadn't even heard of Overture before, and I didn't run any kind of a PPC campaign for them.

So my main question is: how did that ad ever end up showing up if no one put it there?

My side question is: if it's an unpaid ad and just a search engine result of some sort (Inktomi/Yahoo presumably), then would the publisher of the ad get paid for any clicks?

[WebSavvy]

Adam, did you mouseover those ads? All lines are one hyperlink which go to the webshots.com site.

This doesn't look like it's anything to do with Overture/Ink/Yahoo.
It looks like (IMO) that it's from the webshots.com site, themselves.

This begs the question, what is webshots doing running faux ads that link to itself using someone else's domain names?

I'd hazard to guess that it looks like they're playing around with "googlebowling."

Googlebowling is a blackhat technique where you use the domain name and info from a site that ranks high, and you use it to your advantage to un-SERP them.

Do a search on it, and you'll find out more. I've come across this with regard to a few of my old web design clients as well.

I could be wrong, and they're not doing this. Let's hope for their sake, they're not.

[SEFL]

I thought about that, Deb, and I don't think that's it.

On the current version of their site (non-cached page), they are actual Overture ads that redirect to the pages they say they're supposed to. I never bothered to look at the links in the G-cache since they "appeared" the same.

Not really sure why the cache is doing that, and as much as I despise the Webshots! software and the amount of havoc it can wreak on a machine (removed it at least 20 times from clients' machines), I can't see what you're saying being the case unless they're presenting different content to SEs than they are to visitors.

I'm thinking what you saw either something that was cached incorrectly or a script that malfunctioned.

I also can' t see anyone doing any form of Google bowling around the Award site because it's...well, if I'm being completely honest, it's good but could be improved. I'm sure there are better sites owned by better kitchen remodeling/refacing companies out there. In other words, it's not a site that should be a target for something like that.

I could be wrong, though. I truly do not know. I've certainly seen stranger, more far-fetched scenarios than this one play out.