PPC results - fact or fiction?

[Mel]

HI everyone:

There is a general perception among the SEO community that the results from such PPC engines as GoTo and Sprinks are skewed due to so many SEOs using the GoTo tool for keywords, checking results there and running the competitions clicks up just for the H*** of it.

BUT others claim that they get very good ROI on their GoTo campaigns and I even see some respected SEOs using both the above engines.

How to sort out the confusion?

I would appreciate anyones experience and /or comments on this subject.

[bigDugan]

:down: :down:

I've used them, mainly GOTO.

GOTO has done very little to increase my sales, but has done wonders at relieving me of my EXTRA cash-- to the tune of several thousand dollars.:balling:

It is very easy to use IP cloaking and the REFRESH meta tag to generate a "nickel clicker" which will "force" users from different IP addresses to "click" on your PPC links.

I also think that some keyword phrases are "abused" more than others.

If you have a keyword phrase that is unique or not as competitive, you have a much better chance at being successful and less chance of being a victim of bogus clicks and paid-to-surfs.

[Mel]

HI Big D

Thanks for the input. I am curious - did you contact GoTo regarding the bogus clicks, and if so what was their response?

They make a point in their pages that they have ways to control bogus clicks and refund those who are victims.

[bigDugan]

I sent them an email, but never received any reply. I tried to call them, but they were short and curt with me. I also found out later that my rep also set me up with keyword phrases in which I was already coming up as the #1 listing, but now I was paying for that #1 listing!:shocked:

IMHO, there is no way they can control the "nickel clickers"-- as the clicks all come from different ip addresses and appear to be genuine. These "clicks" are NO different than if the user had intended to click on it themselves. Unless GOTO is calling every user that clicks on every link and asking them, I'd say it would be very hard for them to distinguish the "real" clicks from the bogus clicks.

Not to mention that your "real" clicks are coming from the likes of sites like SearchFuel, WayAds, NetFlip, etc.

[bigDugan]

I did a quick search and found a site called searchprograms.com that lists affiliate programs (http://www.searchprograms.com/table1.html) for different search sites.

Play around and take a look at them.

[ihelpyou]

It is very true that many webmasters use the "free" tool on Goto to check their own keywords. This could be clients of GoTo, or anyone. That is a lot of searches, I think we all agree.

It is also true that wordtracker is skewed in this way. I do not think as bad as GoTo.

GoTo is free. Wordtracker is not free. This makes me believe that GoTo is not as reliable. Many more bogus searches going on with it. Besides, you can check Goto with wordtracker anyway if you wish.

I deposited $25 one year ago. Think I have maybe $1 left now. Took that long. Not one client so far has come from GoTo. That is the extent of my experience with them.

I still say when the average user truly knows what the top 3 results really are, the clicks will become less and less. I still say, the only requirement is "money". That is all a site needs for top ranks. Was this kind of thinking why the net started oh so long ago now? Not.

[Advisor]

WordTracker should not (could not?) be skewed the same way as the GoTo results because WT does not get it's results from people doing searches using WT. It gathers them from other search engines (from my understanding). GoTo gets its results from people searching at GoTo. Therefore, of course many (most?) of the searches will be webmasters seeing where they are ranking. Now, if GoTo is also getting results from all their new partner sites, their tool would be much more effective, I would think. But I don't think they're getting those results, although I could be wrong about that.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

yea, GoTo now claims that it includes their partners. Still, it's tool is more scewed than wordtracker. Everyone who does not pay for wordtracker, uses GoTo to check keywords. That is a bunch of users.

[Advisor]

I don't think GoTo gets its numbers from people using the GoTo tool. Doesn't it get the numbers from actual searches on the GoTo site? (Or partner sites as the case may be.)

J

[ihelpyou]

I thought it was all of those places including the tool?

[Advisor]

I don't see why they would use searches that people make using the tool, as part of the results. That wouldn't make any sense! The tool is supposed to show what people search upon in their engine. Not what people are checking to see what people search upon. I don't think GoTo is that strange that they would use those results.

J

[ihelpyou]

Don't know. That is what I thought they did when GoTo was just GoTo and no one else. Thought they simply continued adding those in also.

[ihelpyou]

Whatever the case, I still would not use it over wordtracker. More accurate.

[Advisor]

Me neither.

WordTracker rules and always will!

J

[Mel]

HI All:

As I understand Wordtracker they get their search database from Webcrawler which is how they get the rankings for all the search engines which Wordtracker give results for.

Thus there should be no skewing of the Wordtracker results due to searches done using wordtracker.

[Advisor]

Um...Mel, I don't think it's WebCrawler. That's just Excite's other engine, isn't it? But they do get their data from some meta engine. Mike Mindel over at WT has explained it to me a million times but I always get confused as to how it works!

Let me see if I have one of his emails still...while I'm looking, here's a bit of trivia for you...I was WordTracker's first customer!

Ah yes, I have the link to their latest press release. It's MetaCrawler that I think you meant, Mel.

http://www.wordtracker.com/release_june2001.html

Jill

[ihelpyou]

This is why GoTo is scewed. It uses the majors search results of which gazillions of webmasters use automated bots to check their ranks, including using GoTo in automated tools.

Wordtracker does not use the majors.

Andrew Mindel of Rivergold Associates Ltd said, “Metasearch engines were chosen because they give an unbiased view of searches. Millions of people check their Web site rankings daily in the major engines using software robots, and this can artificially inflate figures. Keywords that you believe are highly targeted may actually result in very little traffic. This type of software is not generally used on metasearch engines.”

[Advisor]

So Andy is saying that software such as TopDog and WPG are not doing searches in MetaCrawler, which I guess does make sense.

J

[Mel]

HI Jill and Doug

Yep you are right Jill it is, of course METAcrawler, but since metacrawler does not search on the majors, how does Wordtracker come up with the competion results for the majors?

[ihelpyou]

They explain all of that on the site but for the life of me, I cannot remember the answer to that question. There is one though. :) Kind of detailed.

[Advisor]

Not positive, but I think they actually go out and do searches on the majors to check the competition, as you request it. That's the only way I can think of that would make sense. Which is why that function is a little bit slow.

Jill

[ihelpyou]

Probly so. They just don't add the requests in the total number of searches on that keyword phrase.

[Web Witch]

....since metacrawler does not search on the majors, how does Wordtracker come up with the competion results for the majors? I wonder this also, is it a scam like many who have been jumping on the band wagon lately. You people told me about Wordtracker but isn't that common since?????


WW

[Mel]

HI All:

I dug a bit through my archives and from there it seems that Wordtracker uses results from both MetaCrawler and Dogpile, then sorts the results and does one search on each search term to get the competition results, then assigns these results to each search term in their database.

I have asked Andy Mindel to confirm that this is still the case or better yet to log on here and explain it directly.

[markymark]

If you could get one of the WordTracker guys to talk us all through it, that would be great. Some UK data in their database would be favo(u)rite though.

One of my preferred methods of discovering what people are searching for (and I've kept this to myself until now) is public trackers, like extreme-dm.com and sitemeter. It doesn't take a great deal of effort to discover some fairly well ranked (top 40 or so) sites using this type of hit counter in whichever field you are optimising for. Then all you do is click through to extreme-dm or whatever and take a look at the terms people are really searching for.

With a bit of research, you can extrapolate what you find on a site to determine which words are worth targeting. You will also find all those phrases that may only get 2-4 hits a week, but when added up can bring in the bulk of a site's best traffic.

Combine this with wordtracker and every other tool you use (even Goto, if you must) and a clearer picture emerges.

[markymark]

PS: The first thing I did when I got to this forum was to click the addfreesites button at the bottom to see if this was a public tracker. It ain't...shame, but it does look really good though. Great options for a free tracker.

[ihelpyou]

Real good point markymark! I have favored online tracking for this reason. Very easy to see things. Log files you can see also, but not as convenient. I use both, but to quickly get a feel for other combinations of phrases, the online stats is very good.

[ihelpyou]

I hope Andy will except Mel's invite to discuss his software here. Would be very good. Not only that, but this forum is obviously WordTracker friendly. :) He could let visitors and other members here see how the software could help them.

[Advisor]

I don't know how big Andy and Mike are on participating in forums, but I know they will return your emails if you have any questions.

If for some reason you email them and they don't reply, let me know and I'll email them. They always return my emails fairly quickly.

Jill

[andymindel]

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to drop in and firstly say thanks to all who have said those lovely things on the first page, Jills "WordTracker rules and always will!". Hearing things like is great and helps us when trying to develop Wordtracker even further. Okay enough ego boosting. Just to clarify a couple of things about Wordtracker and Goto:

Gotos search term suggestion list is taken from actual searches carried out within goto. Before we started Wordtracker we used them frequently to find the words we needed. We achieved a top 10 ranking in Infoseek (still around at the time) for the keyword 'search engine positioning' and sat and waited for the influx of traffic goto told us we would receive. It told us about 30 a day - excellent!! However we received about 6 or 7 and this was for the whole week!!

Lots of confusion made us investigate further and we discovered that the results were being skewed. People were checking rankings in Goto using checkers such as webposition **** and other such checkers. This would explain why 'search engine positioning' was so high. Something interesting another positioning specialist said to me was this:

"Imagine an unusual search term that someone is trying to get positioned on, he signs up and achieves a nice high ranking. He now starts to check his positin using webposition. The suggestion tool now clocks up a few more queries as the checker is put to work, now other positioning specialists see this word and see it has a few searches, now they position themselves with this particular word and start checking their rankings. Even more hits are clocked on the tool. This continues until this obscure word seems to be receiving 100's of hits a day, but hey no one is receiving any traffic!!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I understand Wordtracker they get their search database from Webcrawler which is how they get the rankings for all the search engines which Wordtracker give results for.

Thus there should be no skewing of the Wordtracker results due to searches done using wordtracker.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just to clarify all our search data comes from metacrawlers (Dogpile and Metacrawler) for the exact reasons mentioned above. People don't use metacrawlers to check their rankings so it will give a much more accurate reflection. We don't add any words into the database through people searching at Wordtracker. Again this would end up skewing the results provided.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep you are right Jill it is, of course METAcrawler, but since metacrawler does not search on the majors, how does Wordtracker come up with the competion results for the majors?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Competition results are separate. For this we take all the words you have gathered and submit them to the major search engines, directories, we then bring them back and display them for you. This is done in real time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I dug a bit through my archives and from there it seems that Wordtracker uses results from both MetaCrawler and Dogpile, then sorts the results and does one search on each search term to get the competition results, then assigns these results to each search term in their database.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Exactly this, we gather the competition results from the major engines and report these to you in the column 'competing', the 'count' column then shows you the number of searches these have from Dogpile and Metacrawler'. The '24hr' column then tries to work out how many searches you could expect on the search engine you are looking at (per day).

So say you are finding out how many people are competing at Altavista for the word 'calloway golf'. Now we have a count of 748, the 24hr of 124 and the number of competing web pages - 12900.

The 748 is the number of searches carried out in Dogpile and Metacrawler. The 24hr shows you the number of searches you get expect in one day at Altavista. This is worked out using our statistics and the statistics from www.statmarket.com. Because we know the exact percentages that Dogpile and Metacralwer have of the market and we have access to all the words we can work out what the rest of the engines get.

Here is a detailed report explaining it all http://www.wordtracker.com/articles/predict2001.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope Andy will except Mel's invite to discuss his software here. Would be very good. Not only that, but this forum is obviously WordTracker friendly
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is very Wordtracker friendly, thanks for all the support. I hope some of my answers have cleared things up for you.

Andy
Wordtracker

[ihelpyou]

hey Andy, we all appreciate you stopping by to give us some good incite about your software. :cheers: to you.

Any new word on when UK or others might be incorporated into WordTracker?

Thanks again.

Welcome to the forums! :hi:

[Mel]

for taking time to come in and explain it to us "from the horses mouth".

I have always felt that Wordtracker was the superior solution and now I am sure of it.

[mooper]

False clicks are not a problem with Goto (nor with the other big PPC engines like Findwhat) because their fraud tracking is much more advanced than simply monitoring for the same IP. They also track click freuqency and patterns and a red flag is raised when an abnormal pattern shows up.

As for ROI, it all depends upon whether you know what you are doing or not. I have made a fortune through efficient use of these engines and I am so convinced that they are the future of search engine profitibility that I have invested much of my savings in them.

Bidding $1 per click on a general term not relevant to your site is not going to yield results. However, bidding lower amounts on specific relevant terms will do very well for you.

[highman]

Hi Andy

Any news on the UK version? This will be a massive aid for us

[ihelpyou]

I disagree. False clicks and fraud will always be a problem for the PPC's including GoTo and FindWhat. oh sure, they have fraud prevention but there will always be the software that comes around to combat any prevention. Then, their prevention will be updated as well. A never ending cycle. To say fraud is NOT a problem is simply not true. It will always be a problem, otherwise, why is there a need for prevention?

PPC's in their current form will never last long term. They will change and adapt. If and when the end user truly knows what the listings are, things will change.

Seems like the whole basis for this kind of thing relies solely on "tricking" the end user for success. Sound familiar? Sure does. Why can't the partners be completely truthful with what the listings are? We ALL know why.

[mooper]

Fraud exists and is possible in almost any industry or with any product to a degree. The question is whether it is prevalant enough to eliminate the benefits of the business model. In the case of PPC engines, becuase the software will only tolerate a certain level of falsely generated clicks and cheaters are far and few between in percentage terms (after all, most surfers do not have the motivation or will to spend the time trying to cheat the systems) the effect is minimal. My ROI results and the results of thousands of others say all that is needed. I literally have a 150% profit margin on the advertising dollars I spend with them. Name another business where for every dollar you spend you return two and a half dollars by the end of the same day. Works for me. Yes, there will always be a cat and mouse game between security software and hackers, but in the PPC engine's case, it will only go so far. They can keep fraud down to inconsequential levels quite easily (they already have) so they dont have the need to wipe it out completely. For example, you can go to Goto right now and click on the top listing for "lcd projector" and charge a company or two several dollars for no reason. This will hurt their returns and work towards bids being lowered in the future (an automatic way that companies will adjust to account for the cost of fraudulent clicks), but you can only take it so far. Even with highly advanced IP cloaking, etc, at some point the # of clicks will set off a trigger and stop the charges. Not many people are bent on doing such a thing anyway. A few always will be, but quite few % wise, and after all, it is a numbers game in the end.

As for deceptive listings...I agree that disclosure should be more obvious, but the companies using Goto's database will choose to do what is best for them. The way they utilize it now is working. Goto and Findwhat are two of only a handful of profitable dot coms and their revenues are rocketing while their costs are relatively level. They are trending up strongly in market share and in volume and showing no sign of slowing down yet. Results-driven advertising is replacing the failed pay-per-impression banner advertising model very fast.

[ihelpyou]

I wish I could find the article where it is stated that GoTo tries to influence how their partners display the listings and how they are worded. This is what I simply do not like. That and the fact the listings are deceptive. Not sure if they are doing it now, but the MSN listings were labeled as "most popular". How wrong is that?

[Mel]

We have a member who told us his experiences with GoTo where false clicks cost him several thousand dollars over a short period.

Don't try to convince me, convince him.

[Advisor]

HotBot and AltaVista's pay for click ads are also extremely deceptive, in my opinion. No newbie (and even many others) would know they are ads. Very deceptive. Makes you wonder about any search engine's integrity. Guess SEs don't have integrity, they're just SEs!

Jill

[mooper]

Mel,

Would you be kind enough to point me to the posts of the member who lost thousands because of false clicks? I very much question whether most of the clicks were actually false. It is much more likely that it was simply improperly targeted visitors that the advertiser paid far to much to obtain. I think you said that you were not familiar with Goto's back end (that sounds dirty but wasnt meant to be!)...if you were, you would see that they allow you to set spending limits within a wide array of parameters. Only a fool would spend thousands without first "testing the waters" to see if their spending is producing results. I hate to keep bringing this up, but I am probably as much of an expert as anyone on PPC engine advertising. I could write books superior to those already on the market that teach you strategies that work with them. I have used them nearly since their inception and have made nearly a million $ so far in profits. I am not kidding nor exaggerating about this. The business model works well IF you utilize it properly. If fraud were rampant I would not have done as well as I have.

As for the "misleading" listings their affiliates label...I somewhat agree with you on this point. I agree that it is misleading, but I disagree that it is necessarily a horrible thing and that they results are irrelevant. Many surveys have showed that Goto has some of the most relevant links of any search engine. As time goes on, relevancy will improve even more. They even have a java tool to allow visitors rank the relevancy of the results!

[Mel]

This thread is only two pages long, and BigDugans post is near the top of the first page.

[JuniorHarris]

You might read PPC results (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=344&highlight=goto) and Are PPC engines worth their keep (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=219&highlight=goto).

[The Ney]

As somebodey up there said, there will always be cheating. PPC engines are begging for cheating. Whats easier than to code a piece of software that will bring your worst enemy's (read: competition's) GoTo account to its limit ?

I have noticed that sometimes there are unexplained shifts in certain keyword popularity on GoTo. The strange thing is when that happens on keywords that are complete synonyms, as "lawyer" and "attorney" are. The only logical explanation i came up with was that somebody was tampering with the keywords (and possibly after doing that, tampering with the actual clicks).:confused:

[ihelpyou]

I have noticed that sometimes there are unexplained shifts in certain keyword popularity on GoTo. The strange thing is when that happens on keywords that are complete synonyms, as "lawyer" and "attorney" are. The only logical explanation i came up with was that somebody was tampering with the keywords (and possibly after doing that, tampering with the actual clicks).
Very good The Ney! This is one reason why Wordtracker is more accurate.