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104 Comments
- mrwells, on 07/17/2008, -4/+35As an advertising company, Google should absolutely be liable for BS ad placement. It would be like running a national radio campaign and only having you spots aired in Western Montana (no offense to Montana).
- mithrasinvictus, on 07/17/2008, -6/+34Who would want to pay to advertise with domain squatters?
- spanner, on 07/17/2008, -4/+27YES!!!!!
May this see the end of Google adverts on parked domains. It would be a seismic change - BrendanSheehan, on 07/17/2008, -1/+22Nobody, that's the whole point of this case.
- adamcadamc, on 07/17/2008, -0/+18Well I can't see google tightening this one.
- justgable, on 07/17/2008, -18/+35A whole 16% didn't convert to dollar signs for this guy? It sure sounds like he did a whole lot of testing to see what the average click-through rate was for parked domains/error pages. I mean 1 round of testing and a lost $136 is enough for a Federal lawsuit right?
Come on, where do you think those ads come from that we've all seen on parked domains? The fact that there was the ability to opt out of them already (albeit somewhat buried at the time) should get this thing thrown out.
But buddy, thanks for tying up our federal courts with this cherry , real American hero. - Dunnion, on 07/17/2008, -3/+20So basically this lawyer didn't read the contract he was making with Google, and didn't know that his ads would be placed there. This suit has 0 ground to stand on, "I agreed to what you provided, but what you provided isn't what i hoped it would be, please give me my money back" ha
- tvmatt, on 07/17/2008, -5/+20Surprisingly enough, these pages do result in conversions for a lot of advertisers (including me). I've had some ad campaigns that generate a lot of conversions from these pages, and others that generate none. It's just the nature of the business.
Sounds to me like this lawyer had no clue what he was doing, didn't read the terms, and when he realized he was a lawyer & not a marketing guy, decided to sue. *yawn* - Ninh, on 07/17/2008, -10/+21Looks like someone designed a pretext for a lawsuit to go after some deep pockets.
- Shaman760, on 07/17/2008, -2/+13Perhaps they can also revise the way they suspend accounts. I had a psycho OCD girlfriend 4 years ago generate "empty clicks" on my site. THey terminated my account and even after 4 years + a long apologetic explanation, they still refuse to grant me leniency towards the situation.
- Elliuotatar, on 07/17/2008, -0/+10I agree, and yet, to my dismay, Google has an adwords support page which says that they believe such sites are valuable to advertisers:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?an ...
They directed me to this link when I reported several websites my ads were being run on which only contained advertisements and fake links to content which didn't actually exist, and requested a refund.
So basically, they admitted to condoning this crap, and have the balls to tell me that these sites are valuable to me as an advertiser, when the conversion rates I was getting from said sites said otherwise.
Even if these sites were valuable to ADVERTISERS, most USERS accept that Google's searches are full of these ***** pages only because they believe that it's just a fact of life and there's no way for Google to remove them all. But what Google's said to me indicates that they have no intention of trying to cull sites like that from their searches.
"Do no evil" my ass. - thailand1972, on 07/17/2008, -2/+12Google Ads are losing their effectiveness while becoming more expensive for advertisers; this is reflected in Google's desperation to find new revenue channels.
- SitPoMk, on 07/17/2008, -4/+13For example? I for one love google services and they are as effective for me as they were before.
Calendar, Notebook, Code, Gmail, and lets not forget search - opzero, on 07/17/2008, -1/+10I have a feeling that this is better advertisement for him then AdWords ever could be.
Step 1. Sue Google
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit - WiseElben, on 07/17/2008, -1/+10"A whole 16% didn't convert to dollar signs for this guy?"
No, it was 16% of guaranteed loss, not a 84% success rate. And sure, it might not have hurt this guy by much, but what about smaller companies or poorer webmasters?
Stop being so lenient on Google just because it's Google. What outcry would have risen if this was Microsoft? - tvmatt, on 07/17/2008, -1/+8Do you mean AdWords or AdSense, and how is it a scam? You clearly aren't an advertiser using AdWords or a website owner using AdSense. I've made a lot of money on both - and search marketing on Google happens to be some of the highest ROI advertising that I do. You can track everything & there's full transparency.
There's a reason why Google makes so much money from AdWords - because it drives sales to advertisers at a cost effective price. If it didn't, nobody would advertise, and Google wouldn't make any money. Get it? - t0x2c, on 07/17/2008, -1/+8Inaccurate. There are no girls on the internet.
- strictnein, on 07/17/2008, -1/+7Oh was it?
- Sawta, on 07/17/2008, -0/+6Or out of country; hell, how about in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
- beesaretasty, on 07/17/2008, -5/+11I hope this guy gets disbarred. Given the low dollar amount he actually spent, it seems like he anticipated this to be the problem and chose to ignore his contract and instead sue. He says that 16.3% of all clicks came from these crap sites and none led to a conversion. Sounds to me like this guy can't close the deal and is looking to blame someone else instead of accepting his own fault for not paying attention in college, particularly to those ethics courses.
- Elliuotatar, on 07/17/2008, -1/+7Uh, I advertise on google, and I can confirm that pages like that have a ***** conversion rate. In fact, it's far worse than 16% not converting, and I can say that after running ads for years.
- Sererena, on 07/17/2008, -1/+7He should have read the fine print, HE'S A FREAKING LAWYER.
- tvmatt, on 07/17/2008, -0/+5Google doesn't reimburse advertisers? Is that why I always receive more clicks than I'm billed for each month? Is that why I see account credits when Google finds fraud that their automated system doesn't catch?
- Sawta, on 07/17/2008, -1/+6Let's sue a big company because we didn't bother to fully check out what we were sinking almost 900$ into. I'm sure this will go over great in court.
In reality, I wouldn't be surprised if THIS was the lawyers "backup plan" to get more people interested in his website. Impress them by suing a huge internet company and you'll be in the front of everyone's mind for a while. - NJank, on 07/17/2008, -2/+7Gmail: spam filter / source issues
search: parked domains / useless sites returned
groups: search results filled with spammer-generated, random character groups/conversations burying anything useful.
lots of things are still good. (google docs, notebook, scholar not bad) But people have learned to game the Google system. - t0x2c, on 07/17/2008, -0/+4Sound's alot like the pirate bay to me.
- thailand1972, on 07/17/2008, -2/+6"Parked domains do provide great conversions for advertisers"
Yeah, right...these ads are just escape routes from a dead page - and that's IF the user is legitimate, and not part of some click fraud network (the type of networks that set-up Made For Adsense deadsites). I know Adwords very well myself, but gave up because the ad network is rubbish - poor value for money. - Myonosken, on 07/17/2008, -2/+6Of course because we are all pieces of *****. You know, our business is totally different to everyone elses' and we are all ***** rather than a handful who are obviously the ones in the media.
Oh wait. - flamingduck, on 07/17/2008, -0/+4Oooooohhhh YES! Maybe I'll get another class action settlement credited to my account!!! The last one, a few years ago, netted me $8.37!!
- TotalDouche, on 07/17/2008, -1/+5A client of mine is a lawyer and was bleeding cash from his account until I took it over and made it profitable. It's all about what you know.
- lukemann, on 07/17/2008, -11/+14How much of google's revenue is derived through fraud (AdWords) and copyright infringement (YouTube)? Don't be evil!
- HonoredMule, on 07/18/2008, -0/+3Bad analogy, and red herring argument given that "click converts from a parked domain name" aren't actually happening in significant (or in the article's case, any) quantity.
People actually want /real/ parking space. Websites with no content are worthless, which would still be fine if they didn't exist just to profit by attracting the attention of people who were looking for actual content, and wasting visitors' time and advertisers' dollars (and I dare say 0% conversion rate--a believable figure given the random stab-in-the-dark nature of parked-generic-domain ads--qualifies as wasted advertising). - Tenlow, on 07/17/2008, -0/+3Actually if you want to get technical, a monopoly is capitalism at it's best. A company was able to use the free market to drive its competitors out of business. Yes it's unethical, but don't try to raise the communism flag on this one.
- Elliuotatar, on 07/17/2008, -0/+3I just had to argue with google for a MONTH to get back $500 they overcharged me for, and none of their support people would admit any wrongdoing. No problem with their recording of clicks, no click fraud.
Then when I was at my wits end and was contesting the charges with my bank, their automated system picked up on the fraudlent clicks itself and reimbursed me.
So woo, the automatic reimbursement works. But they're still a huge pain in the ass to deal with, and good luck getting a refund if it doesn't kick in because they'll never admit you're right, even when their own software knows there's click fraud. - strictnein, on 07/17/2008, -0/+2No kidding. I just got a credit for ~$25 from Google a couple of days ago for "Click Quality" reasons, and a "Service Adjustment" a couple days before that.
- t3rmv3locity, on 07/18/2008, -0/+2You do know that clicking a google ad makes google money, right?
- t0x2c, on 07/17/2008, -0/+2Why are you voting this guy down? He's saying it would be really difficult to win this case, which would show that he is a damn good lawyer, whether he's in the right or the wrong here.
- dning88, on 07/17/2008, -1/+3I agree with tvmatt. I use both and make a decent amount of money from it. There are lots of ways to test your adwords advertising and there really isn't in Google's advantage to just try to trash their reputation and make the quick buck.
Learn to appreciate what a company has created and dig into it before you complain. - fastblader, on 07/17/2008, -0/+2I'm in. I spent $175 on adwords targeting the US, but my webstats show fewer hits than they register as clicks. Plus over 60% of my website hits are from Asia. Did Google not know that when they charged me?
- stutimandal, on 07/17/2008, -1/+3The peril of parked domain lies with ICANN. There is no need to allow agents to hoard the possible domain names and auction them later.
- mithrasinvictus, on 07/17/2008, -2/+4It was meant to be a rhetorical question.
- jn024, on 07/18/2008, -0/+1you guys are hilarious
yes the clicks do convert from parked names - this is a billion dollar industry
how is it extortion? im not talking about registering someone else's trademark or brand, i am talking about generic domain names that no one can trademark.
Its ok it is better you stay out of this business since you cannot get your hands around it. - Rekutyn, on 07/17/2008, -0/+1I had a class action settlement of "credit monitoring for a year" a couple months ago. I laughed.
- inactive, on 07/18/2008, -0/+1except lawyers aren't the only people that use adwords
- inactive, on 07/18/2008, -1/+2Full transparency.LOL. Mark my words knucklehead. You are paying for bots, 3 year-olds and retards.
- zoom1928, on 07/17/2008, -1/+2Agreed. I had about 400k impressions per day on a site for nearly three months before I finally made my first $100. Hosting Google ads is a complete scam. From my earlier experience hosting ads for Lycos, I thought I was going to make about that much per day.
- frascellyboy273, on 07/17/2008, -0/+1now we know how google makes so much money... hehe
- tvmatt, on 07/18/2008, -0/+1So bots, 3 year-olds, and retards are buying my products? Advertising online is driven primarily based on a cost-per-order basis. If I had 1200 clicks with no sales, and I'm paying for clicks, I'm going to stop. But when those 1200 clicks get me a significant number of sales - at a cheaper cost than I spend offline - clearly, it's an effective way to advertise.
Also, I have server logs. I can see what each and every visitor does on my site - where they come from, where they're located, who their ISP is, how much time they spend, how many pages they visit, and if they purchase. If Google was scamming me, I think I would've figured that out by now.
Lastly, yes - Google does provide pretty much full transparency now. I can see all of the searches that send me clicks I can see what percentage of my traffic (and sales, too) are coming from parking pages, error pages, user generated content (broken down by blogs, video sites, social networking, and another 1 or 2 categories that I forget right now), and even what pages are sending clicks & sales from the content network (websites using AdSense). How is that not transparent?
Take the time to learn about something before you knock it, and maybe you'll sound intelligent next time. - tvmatt, on 07/18/2008, -0/+1You do realize that you can choose what locations you want your ad to show up in... right?
- cyssero, on 04/18/2009, -0/+1There is spam in the sense of receiving spam in your inbox/spam folder, but the spam Gmail suffers from the most I think is spam *originating* from Gmail. The largest (and most hated, for good reason) ISP banned Gmail altogether because its users were receiving ridiculous amounts of spam originating from Gmail accounts.
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