Hooked on Overture...?

[Christian_SEO]

I'm new to the Overture scene, so I apologize if this has been discussed before, but I did not see anything about it and it should be of great concern.

I have a small client site that I optimized over two years ago. This unique visitors numbers climbed like all of our sites for about 3-4 months after the submission process. For two years they went up and down 5-10%, but pretty much stayed the same.

This Summer they discussed getting more traffic and I suggested PPC with Overture, Findwhat, and Kanoodle. Findwhat and Knoodle have done ok. We still have not burned through the $25 we opened each account with.

Overture however, is something else. We opened that account with $50 and just added another $25. I know, we're really big spenders... Anyway, results were not that great.

The really BAD part though, is when I pulled all the bids back to the minimum, the site traffic dropped through the floor! We lost our listings on every system that Overture feeds. The client was upset and I was pretty flipped out by it.

So now we've pushed up the Overture bids and the client has settled down since we're back in the game again.

I have another client that is running their own PPC account and they have just reported the same thing. A site that was up and running fine for several years has taken a big hit since using PPC at Overture.

My question to all is: Has anyone seen this situation before? At this point I cannot recommend the big "O" to anyone, unless they are unable to use standard SEO methods.

Thanks,
Christian

[nzbase]

Overture is fine if you are in a situation where a substantial budget is available and traffic on keywords through standard SEO methods takes too long to setup. This can happen with highly competitive keywords where an advertiser needs maximum traffic quickly to reach a sustainable ROI.

Basically Overture tailor their system to anyone who is paying large sums per month - then Overture will look after you. I have always found with Overture, if you're not in the top you get no traffic at all. I'd be interested to know if others manage to keep bids low and still have traffic flowing.

Have you tried Google Adwords? They take a bit of getting used to but I find they can provide more stable traffic once your familiar with it.

[Advisor]

Are you saying that the site's regular search engine listings disappeared when you stopped paying for Overture ads? (or made them cheaper?)

Jill

[Christian_SEO]

After my original optimization and submission efforts, the client was really pleased, because they were searching at sites like AOL and getting great ranking for the search terms they used.

Since the Overture program started, they are either not found or are way, way, way down the list.

Christian

[Advisor]

So, Christian, what do you make of that? Do you think something fishy is going on? Coincidence?

I would definitely like to know if others have had this experience.

Christian, have you ever had rankings disappear like that before? (Without doing any Overture spends.) Do you see any other reason why the site might not be ranking well? Actually, could you maybe pm me the site in question and a few of the keyword phrases they were ranking high with? Oh, and are they ranking well in Google, but not the Overture related engines?

I tend to believe that sometimes people can *think* that there's a correlation between stopping an Overture campaign and their rankings suddenly tanking, but it's possible there are other reasons. On the otherhand, many search engines these days are not the most trustworthy entitities in the world, and therefore I certainly wouldn't put it past them to do something fishy like this. But man, I sure hope not. I wonder how anyone could ever prove something like this? We'd probably need someone who works at the engines/overture to come clean if it really were going on.

It seems that it's worth studying a bit more, if nothing else.

Jill

[Alan Perkins]

If you look at your stats, can you see a direct correlation between your reduced Overture spend, and a drop in referrers from Overture-fed engines' unpaid SERPs? And between your increased Overture spend, and a rise in referrers from Overture-fed engines' unpaid SERPs.

Even if so, it's the first I've heard of anything like this. I would be very surprised if it was anything other than a coincidence, otherwise it would be replicated in a lot of other posts.

[ihelpyou]

What would Overture have to do with AOL regular ranks or Google for that matter?

I can't see Google or AOL down-grading a page simply because you dropped Overture.

Toooo much 'conspiracy' thinking, me thinks.

[Christian_SEO]

I'm starting to feel stupid, but what has happened is still true. At the moment I don't have all my facts together, partly because some of the information has come from the client... and I never completely trust the info coming from the client....

Before this gets too out of hand, let me clarify that the situation seems ot be limited to Overture and the sites they feed.

Before Overture, the site was showing up and doing well, AFTER Overture, and with minimum bids, the sites listings were either not showing, or tanked.

So I think what is happening is that once you start to pay, you lose and "duplicate" listings, or possibly any listings for the domain that are not paid.

I apologize to everyone if this is a huge misunderstanding on my part, but I think I will take up Jill on her offer to help me to better analyize what we are seeing.

I'll also try to get some more information on the second customer to see if that report is real as well.

Thanks,
Christian

[Advisor]

So I think what is happening is that once you start to pay, you lose and "duplicate" listings, or possibly any listings for the domain that are not paid. Hopefully, this is really not what is happening.

I get many emails from people who seem to think that happens with Google Adwords. They have an ad and suddenly their regular listings are gone. However, I don't believe them, and I think other factors are involved. But that's because I trust Google. I don't trust the other engines very much, so it would be interesting to note if others have seen this. I don't recall getting emails on this subject though. Just the Google adwords.

Jill

[nzbase]

Originally posted by Advisor
Hopefully, this is really not what is happening.
I hadn't heard of this type of complaint before. Although I am in the same boat with you Jill that I would just trust Google to not de-duplicate paid listing's sites.

Have you heard of this happening in any of the other PPC's? I have a number of accounts with all of the major providers and would love to know that i didn't have to go through all of them to check for this on each url...

Thanks

Gary

[MakeMeTop]

>I would definitely like to know if others have had this experience.

As an avid user of PPC on behalf of all my clients initially I have not seen this happen.

I always start off a client campaign by using PPC on Overture and Espotting. As rankings start coming into play through SEO I reduce the bids on Overture for the major keyphrases the client comes up for. Normally these are the more competitive phrases, as these are the ones I concentrate my SEO efforts on. So, by the end of a 3/4 month period the only bids I have left are sub 15 cents.

As I am continually reducing a client spend on PPC and increasing ROI, I would certainly have seen any adverse reaction and I haven't!

I would try and get access to the client logs, but would suggest they are confusing top rankings (which they had on PPC) with seeing themselves drop to lower positions and yelling 'our listings/traffic have tanked'.

If the rankings have gone South - I would say this is a pure coincidence unfortunately.

[Christian_SEO]

I was hoping someone had done some more research on this topic.

MakeMeTop: I think your process is the norm. A site gets launched and the SEO throws some money into PPC to get things started, then pulls back as the regular SE & DIR listings are published.

What I saw was the reverse. A site with good listings lost them after using Overture.

If anyone has a client that has had a site that has been up and running for an extended period of time, but wants to get into PPC, I would like us to do a little documented research and see if we can duplicate what I have seen.

Thanks,
Christian