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"But it's not fair! What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?"

Google Gets Spanked!

"But it's not fair! What if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google?" - Stephanie Milani, Google Litigation Paralegal

Just stumbled across an inspirational story about how one small company went after Google in Small Claims Court after having its Adsense account disabled and $721 in earnings confiscated.

The first half of the article is very Kafkaesque as the lone entrepreneur, Aaron Greenspan, attempts to obtain answers from a large bureaucracy as to why his account was terminated and monies owing confiscated. He tries emails at first which evoke no response. Then he switches to phone calls in an attempt to get answers. Again, this goes no where until he resorts to trickery to try to get through to a human being at Google--any human being. When he finally does, they stonewall him as well. Apparently no one at Google--absitively posolutely no one!--knows why a particular Adsense account has been disabled.

The bottom line is that if someone or something at Google deems you guilty, you're guilty and that's the end of the matter. You're given no chance to defend yourself or to even find out why your account was disabled.

But our hero persisted. To make a long story short, Aaron decided to go after Google in Small Claims Court which doesn't allow lawyers within its chambers and won. The court awarded him the $721  plus $40 in court costs.

You can read the details at Why I Sued Google (and Won).

To answer your question Stephanie Milani, it would be wonderful if everyone whose account was canceled sued Google in Small Claims Court. It's long overdue. Fight the power!

Frankly, I don't know why anyone bothers with Adsense anymore. The program's payout to publishers has dropped to about 10% of what it was back in 2003, yet Google continues to do well. This tells you that Google is pocketing that additional 90% of advertising revenue.

Moreover, when was the last time that you clicked on an Adsense ad? I have probably clicked on one or two in the past twelve months. Like most people, I no longer even see them and when I do I tend to dismiss them as promotions for questionable or downright shady offers.

Spread the word to Adsense publishers, in Small Claims Court you stand a chance of winning against the Google monopoly.

Aaron Greenspan gets my vote for hero of the week.

--

PS And here's why Adsense's sister program, Adwords, is also a bum deal for the majority of businesses.

The Google Scoop™

The Google Scoop™

Google's Adwords and Adsense may well be the best cash generating black box ever devised.

If Google looks like it won't hit its numbers for the month, someone just twists a knob on the outside of the box and *presto!*, the numbers are hit.

I experienced what webmasters call the "Google Scoop™" this past weekend. There's an AdWords Group in one of my campaigns which normally burns up a few dollars per day.  We're talking single digits. Partly because it's such a trivial portion of my monthly ppc budget, I have basically let it slide due to a focus on tweaking bigger campaigns.

Well, this last Sunday (March 30th), I saw the Google Scoop™ in action. While taking a peek at my Adwords expenditures for the day, I noticed a huge bulge in one campaign. After clicking it open, I saw that the expenditures were all in the group I mentioned above. By Sunday evening the Adwords group which averaged about $3 a day had shot up to $29.35. Some digging revealed that my ads started appearing on a basically a junk site that same day which then resulted in the spike and no sales.

Yes, I'm ultimately accountable for choosing to allow my ads to be shown across Goog's Junk Network, but I'm still annoyed over this. The site in question has nothing to do with business nor did those clicks generate any sales. I asked, tongue in cheek, for a credit and of course, as always, Google's online live chat person told me that hell would have to freeze over first.

For more on the Google Scoop™, read this recent article, titled "Google's riches rely on ads, algorithms, and worldwide confusion" in The Register:

Of course, there are days when a campaign doesn't reach its daily budget, when an ad receives fewer clicks than normal. And that's where Google's late February email comes into play. The email notified certain AdWords users that Google was tweaking their ad campaigns to include something called "automatic matching." With this AdWords "feature," Google automatically grabs an advertiser's excess budget and uses it to post ads against keywords other than those the advertiser is actually bidding on.

"Automatic Matching automatically extends your campaign's reach by using surplus budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries that are not already triggered by your keyword lists," Google's email reads. "For example, if you sold Adidas shoes on your website, Automatic Matching would automatically crawl your landing page and target your campaigns to queries such as 'shoes,' 'adidas,' 'athletic,' etc., and less obvious ones such as 'slippers' that our system has determined will benefit you and likely lead to a conversion your site."

In other words, Google will automatically take the money an advertiser isn't spending and spend it on searches the advertiser hasn't explicitly approved. For the average advertiser, this is not a good idea.

I'm reminded of an announcement that came across the radio a decade ago while I was riding in a taxi to Toronto's Pearson Int'l Airport.  It was a PSA about a band of pickpockets who were working the airport that day. It ended with a warning to watch your wallet.

The same advice is appropriate for anyone using Google Adwords: watch your wallet.

Be especially vigilant at month's end.

The Internet Has Been a Real Boon for Google

Anyone remember the bad old days of Google search?

I just found one of these old search requests under a sofa cushion.

Young people of today have no idea that it used to take a month on average to get a "hit".

Click to embiggen.

Plucky Little Startup Takes on Google

Company introduces a better method for finding online discussions than currently offered by Google and other search engines.

Israel-based startup Omgili has developed a specialized search engine that strives to help users research topics based on Web discussions and other forms of user-generated content.

The four-person company maintains that because of its highly focused crawler, it can do a better job than Google (GOOG) of identifying this content, helping companies find out what those on the web are saying about them, and helping consumers and business conduct research efficiently. Omgili was recently named Search Engine of the Month by AltSearchEngine. (source)

I'm all for anything that chips away at the market share of the New Evil Empire.

Adsense: I will teach you how to become rich with Adsense!

The World's Best Adsense Money-making Course is now free!

There's a secret formula to making money with Adsense which only insiders such as myself and a handful of other online marketers know about.  I am now going to go open kimono and share this amazing secret with all of you. Of course I risk incurring the wrath of my fellow insiders by doing so, but the secret to making big money with Adsense needs to be revealed to the world.

Here's the magic money-making formula for Adsense.

Do you want to earn $1000/month with Adsense?

Then just spend $10,000/month on Adwords.

Do you want to earn $2000/month with Adsense?

Then just spend $20,000/month on Adwords.

Do you want to earn $10,000/month with Adsense?

Then just spend $10o,000/month on Adwords.

That's all there really is to it. These stats are based on 5 years of experience with both programs.
The key to earning a dollar with Adsense is spending $10 on Adwords.

Now you don't need to spend several hundred dollars on one of those Adsense courses. You can just blow it all on Adsense!

How to Cut Your Google Adwords Click Fraud Losses in Half

Want to minimize your losses to Adwords click fraud? Read this:

Looks like Google click fraud continues to rise according to Click Fraud Network:

The latest Click Fraud Index from Click Forensics, which is out today, states that the fraudulent click rate is on the rise.

Key findings from data reported for Q2 2007 include:

• The overall industry average click fraud rate was 15.8 percent for Q2 2007. This is an increase from 14.1 percent for the same quarter in 2006 and 14.8 percent for Q1 2007.
• The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 25.6 percent. That’s up from 21.9 percent for Q1 2007 and 19.2 percent for Q4 of 2006.
• Traffic from botnets doubled from Q1 to Q2 2007 and contributed significantly to the increase in click fraud rates.
• In Q2 2007, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside North America came from France (5.1 percent), China (3.2 percent) and Australia (3 percent).

The best and easiest way to protect yourself against click fraud, if you're an Adwords advertiser, is to not allow your ads to be distributed through the Google content network. Go into your admin panel and turn that feature off. Your chances of being victimized by click fraudsters is greatest when your Adwords ads appear as Adsense ads on other people's websites--for obvious reasons.

I'm one of the earliest Adwords adopters having joined in 2002. Adwords work best for the advertiser when they appear alongside actual search results. This is why I only allow my ads to appear on the Google site for people actively seeking information on a specific product. (I have experimented with content network distribution a few times and its failed the test every time.)

I recall when Google first introduced content distribution for Adwords a few years ago. Advertisers didn't get any warning from Google that their ads would automatically be appearing on hundreds of sites as well as in emails. When I logged in two days after this feature was introduced, I was shocked to discover that my daily average expenditures had tripled. What's worse is that these additional clicks via the content network were junk as they didn't result in sales. I immediately turned the feature off and complained to Google about content distribution being made the default setting for everyone. They responded with their usual shrug of disinterest.

Don't waste your advertising dollars on Google content network unless you are one of the few advertisers for whom it makes sense.

Google to Acquire Switzerland

For Immediate Release

Google to Acquire Switzerland

Acquisition to justify earlier purchase of Boeing 767

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - July 16, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)today announced it has agreed to acquire the nation of Switzerland for $510 billion, an amount equal to twice its annual GDP. Company spokesperson Judith Thompson stated the acquisition was made in order to justify last year's purchase of a Boeing 767 airliner.

“Now that Switzerland will be Sergey and Larry's new Christmas home, they will finally have an excuse to fly their jet somewhere.”

~snip~

Well okay, this isn't exactly true.

In fact, I just made the whole dang thing up after reviewing my traffic logs and seeing that a lot of people were doing searches on "Google purchases Switzerland" after my earlier post titled Is Google Really Good for Small Business?

The point I was trying to make with the earlier post is that it's never good for the market when any one company so thoroughly dominates it as is the case with Google's domination of the Net. Almost everyday Google spreads like a cancer into a new space.

I have always been keenly interested in business strategy particularly as it relates to maximizing one’s influence in an industry. One of the finest books on business strategy is Matthew Josephson’s The Robber Barons. The Robber Barons were absolute masters at identifying and controlling the choke points in various industries—particularly railroads. If freight had to be transported by two or more separate railroad lines, as was often the case back then, to get to its ultimate destination, the Robber Barons would look for a means to shoehorn themselves into a controlling position with as little investment as possible. Often this was achieved by acquiring a small railroad that served as a connector between two larger lines. Why spend a fortune to buy a huge line when you could maximize control for minimum investment by only controlling the choke points?

The Google brilliance lies in having achieved almost a monopoly-level control between business and customer. Google is the ultimate online chokepoint. I read a few days ago that Google is projected to control 90% of the search market shortly. Today your online business sinks or swims based on how it does with Google. Unfortunately, Google is a black box designed to extract as much cash as possible from small business in exchange for as little as possible.

Last year I found these comments at IdeaGrove:

But Orchardo believes that whatever the law says, the time will come when the public no longer accepts Google's secrecy.

The public has different expectations for companies that become dominant in their markets and, as a result, assume a big role in our lives. Dominance -- rather than any corporate misstep -- is the reason for the backlash Microsoft began receiving after its Windows 95 peak, and it is the reason for the backlash Wal-Mart is receiving today.
...
Frankly, we much prefer Technorati's transparent ranking system to Google's PageRank mumbo-jumbo, which has birthed a cottage industry of charlatans and witch doctors who charge companies an arm and a leg to mysteriously boost their Google rankings.

That's soooo Web 1.0, Google. Oh well -- enjoy your secret handshakes while
they last.

I suspect that we may be nearing the tipping point with regards to the public's acceptance of Google's dominance. Through my work I hear of various projects which will crack open the Google black box. They are still in stealth mode and I don't know what their estimated launch dates are. However, it's a case of the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.

Is Google Really Good for Small Business?

I keep reading and hearing from business and success gurus how Google Adwords is the greatest thing to ever happen to small business. According to these people, who by the way run seminars and not online businesses, all that an entrepreneur has to do to succeed these days is start an Adwords pay-per-click campaign and then stand next to the money volcano with an open butterfly net to catch all the money that will shower down on him. These people appear to be trapped in a 2003 time-warp. The reality today is a bit more complicated. With this fact in mind the muse inspired me to craft this fable about Google and small businesses.

A Fable: Doing Business in Google-land

Josef K had dreamt of owning and operating his own shop in the capital for a very long time. He studied the subject for years and once enough money had accumulated in his savings account, he tendered his letter of resignation and moved to the great city where it was rumored success could be achieved by anyone willing to learn fast and work hard.

His first order of business after finding accommodations was to obtain the required permits. Despite arriving early at the Ministry of Licensing he had to stand in line for three hours before finally working his way up to the clerk’s cage. After he had explained his plans, the clerk paused before replying while her eyes darted furtively from side to side. Upon establishing that no one else was within earshot, she leaned forward and whispered to Josef K, “Herr K, I could lose my job for telling you this, but tell you I must. Here in the capital all business traffic is strictly controlled by one man we call “Crazy Ivan”. He has sole discretion over how many customers a merchant gets. Moreover, Crazy Ivan never explains how he makes these decisions—and even worse—he’s maddeningly fickle. One day you are the apple of his eye and enjoying a flood of customers; the next day he turns on you and shuts it off. Crazy Ivan can make your business disappear in an instant if you cross him either intentionally or unintentionally.”

Josef K was taken aback by this disclosure from the licensing clerk. However, nothing was going to interfere with his long cherished dreams of opening a shop and joining the ranks of the capital’s mercantile class. After a slight hesitation, he replied, “Thank you for your kind words of caution, fraulein. I will look into this Crazy Ivan in order to understand how I may gain and keep his favor.” The clerk accepted Josef K’s money and issued the license without uttering another word.

Within a month the new shop was open for business. Prior to this event, Josef K had joined a merchant's trade group focused on learning how to garner favor with Crazy Ivan. He was shocked to discover that its members lived in mortal fear of being vaporized by Crazy Ivan. Reports circulated daily through the group about the latest shops to disappear for reasons never explained.

Through this group Josef K learned that Crazy Ivan offered free listings in the Crazy Ivan Free Yellow Pages. Josef K had high hopes for a listing in this service as it had rapidly become the most important advertising medium in the capital. Everyone relied on it to find merchandise and services. Indeed, the phrase “Crazy Ivan it” had become synonymous with finding the best deals.

However, Josef K was quickly disappointed with the results. Curious as to why his free listing wasn’t bringing in any business, he opened a copy of the latest Crazy Ivan Yellow Pages and was horrified to discover that his shop was listed 12,978^th in a category with 14,739 merchants.

At this point Josef K was beginning to feel financial stress. Without sales he would have to close his shop and return to his old job out in the country—if they would have him. Some fellow merchants advised hiring consultants from the newly emerging profession of Crazy Ivan Free Yellow Pages Optimization Wizards. These wizards promised to place a spell on Crazy Ivan which would cause him to steer more business to their clients’ shops. Josef K decided not to go this route because their fees seemed exorbitant. Moreover, he simply could not get them to commit to any measurable results no matter how hard he tried. So he focused on learning how to cast his own spells with the result that his ad rose to 25^th spot over the next six months, but still the business traffic evaded him because few customers looked beyond the first two pages of ads.

Then one morning a Hummer 1 stretch limousine pulled up and the chauffeur stepped outside to open the rear door for a man with a slightly sinister look. The man entered the empty shop and introduced himself as “Crazy Ivan, the Solver of All Business Problems”. He explained that he was aware of Josef K’s traffic problem and wanted to offer a solution. The solution was for Josef K to join Crazy Ivan’s new advertising program “IvanAds ” in which he could bid auction-style for customers. The highest bidders would have all the traffic directed to their shops. Merchants relying on the old free listings  would find themselves without customers. To make it as easy as possible to use, merchants only needed to supply Crazy Ivan with their credit card numbers. He would then do the rest which included deciding how much they actually paid per customer as well as how many they received each day. All the merchant had to do was wait in his shop for the sales to cascade in.

This sounded too good to be true, especially considering the low bid prices estimated for his advertising category, so Josef K asked a few questions about how the auction system worked. Crazy Ivan didn’t like these questions. In fact, they made him angry. He told Josef K, “Look, you don’t need to know how my system works. I do all the calculations in my head. It’s proprietary. Capisce!? All you have to do is provide your credit card number and I do the rest.  Trust me to use a system that is totally fair to everyone. Take it or leave it, chump.”

Crazy Ivan then walked out and got back into his Hummer.

Feeling that he didn’t have much choice at this point as even his 25^th spot in the Free Yellow Pages was basically worthless, Josef K signed up for IvanAds.

Since Josef K was an early entrant, for the first year traffic came in at reasonable bid levels and Josef K was happy to be making a living. Finally, he was moving closer to realizing his dream.

In the meantime, IvanAds business was so good for Crazy Ivan that he upgraded his private aircraft from a Learjet 36 to a slightly used Space Shuttle. The only thing that grew as quickly as his profits was merchant paranoia about displeasing him and being vaporized as by now Crazy Ivan had complete control of the advertising market.

Then the performance of IvanAds suddenly began to deteriorate as the get-rich-quick meme started to spread: just open a shop and IvanAds will make you rich, rich, rich! Josef K quickly realized that bid prices were being driven upwards to uneconomic levels not by the program’s actual value to merchants but rather by a steady barrage of market hype from the clueless Talking Heads on the Lobotomy Box as well as a host of get-rich-quick gurus selling courses and seminars to the masses on “how to reach your peak potential as a millionaire with IvanAds”.

Unfortunately, the masses had no idea how to calculate what they could actually afford to pay per customer, so they started bidding wars which squeezed the serious merchants out of the coveted top eight ad slots in the secret auctions. Everyone was jumping aboard with Newbies happily spending $100 on IvanAds to sell products retailing for $100. Josef K responded initially by raising his bids in order to secure at least the last spot in the first eight slots. But this quickly became impossible as more Newbies joined the program on a short term basis, drove the bids up still further, then quickly went bust. Every month there was a fresh wave of Newbies trying to outbid each other for the top positions in IvanAds. Josef K knew the maximum he could afford to bid before he started losing money on each transaction, so after a while his position slipped to the little seen second page of IvanAds.

It was at this point that he started experimenting with other methods to bring customers in and backed off on his IvanAds expenditures.

Despite all of these problems with the program, the clueless Talking Heads continued to hype the Crazy Ivan Bubble which was growing bigger than anyone in their right minds could have ever imagined. Newbies were now tripping over each other for the opportunity to pay $200 for every $100 in sales. Crazy Ivan used his bonus check to purchase the USS Ronald Reagan for his personal yacht and retained the entire 6,000 man crew and air-wing.

Meanwhile the actual performance of IvanAds--from the perspective of merchants--continued to plummet for a variety of reasons while the Talking Heads continued to tout it as the best thing that had ever happened to small business. Shysters started selling IvanAd seminars and manuals for $999 to the get-rich-quick crowd.

By now Newbies had pumped up their IvanAd expenses to $300 for every $100 in sales. Crazy Ivan continued to make money hand-over-fist and that’s all that mattered to him. He acquired Switzerland for his “Christmas home”.

Finally, the savvy merchants, realizing that IvanAd's 15 minutes of fame were drying up, started to quietly shift towards more viable promotional strategies known only to a few. The masses, as usual, caught on and followed five years later.

One day, Crazy Ivan awoke to the fact that he had killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Shortly afterwards, the sheriff came by to repossess the Space Shuttle, USS Ronald Reagan, and Switzerland. The citizens of the great capital had finally learned the hard way that one man must never again be allowed to dominate the market so completely.

The End—with my sincerest apologies to Franz Kafka.

All Copyrights - Peter Ireland

adwords pay-per-click advertising entrepreneurship

Google Class Action Lawsuit

Are you trying to figure out how to respond to Google's email about the class action suit against it? Afterall, it is a confusingly worded communication.

You can find a discussion here with some good advice.

Google Class Action Lawsuit.

Clusty: the great little SE that doesn't spy on you

Over the past year my search habits have been changing. Up until then about 80% of my searches were conducted on Goog. But after growing dissatisfied with its results, I have started using other SEs.

One of the better ones is Clusty which has a better approach to parsing the relevent pages for you.

Here's another reason to use Clusty: it doesn't spy on you. Like many people who value their privacy, I don't feel comfortable with the fact that Google records every search I conduct through it like some key-logger.

Clusty doesn't care what you do nor does it keep a record of your online habits.

Give Clusty a try. You'll like it.

Clusty, the little search engine that respects your privacy.