Google Throws Away The Rules, Again

Published on October 29th, 2008 by Jeremy Chatfield

Google’s user base may be built on high reputation with organic search visitor volume, but that doesn’t prevent the search giant from leading users a merry dance in the pursuit of profit. Here’s a real world example. I’ve taken this from a real Google Account, with real web analytics data. I’ve concealed the precise search queries and the exact nature of the client; you can assume that it isn’t a TV company, so anything that strikes you as bizarre about the scenario, is probably bizarre because that’s *not* the client :)

Pretend that you advertise for a TV network. The TV company offers live scores on their web site. So you pay for the keywords “football live scores” and “live football scores”, “live scores”, etc. You’ll bid less for “live scores” than the keywords that include “football” - people also look for “nba live scores”, “cricket live scores”, etc and their CTR and conversion rates are lower on your football-only pages.

For this account, you disable Content Match - this is initially focused on keyword search; eventually you’ll operate another campaign with differently constructed AdGroups and adverts for the AdSense network. So, no content match for now.

You use Broad, Phrase and Exact Match. Broad match will catch “cricinfo.com”, “crickinfo.com” and other stuff that is related to sports scores - so you need to start building up a good long list of negative keywords. But whatever else, at least you know that you have excluded the Content Network.

Despite that… your advert could appear here:

Can you tell the difference between this pages presentation of a keyword search targeted advert and AdSense? No? I can’t. If that’s not content network, then what is it? It isn’t keyword search in any way that I understand the term. Of course, Google don’t actually define “search pages” and “content pages” in their advertising contracts… So if Google defines this as a “Search Page”, no advertiser has a leg to stand on in complaining to them.

Here’s the three live campaigns for this client, this month, with identifying details and exact keyword data blocked out. This is just to show that this client has not been paying for contextual adverts:

How can I tell that the account has been displaying adverts here? Referral Information. Web server log files and web analytics reveal the source:

See that third line? “RightHealth.com”? That’s the one showing “Liver Scores” adverts. You can’t tell from this snippet *when* that data was collected. I can’t see a good way to show you that this was collected recently, but I observed this in the clients web analytics between the dates 23rd October and 26th October.

Note that referral information can be missing - some browsers don’t send it, bots don’t usually set it, and it can be withheld intentionally under various conditions. Referrer information can also be wrong - intentionally or unintentionally. The Referrer information comes from the web browser of the user, not Google. So if this referral source has been faked by a user, they’ve gone to some considerable effort to make the click look like a plausible one - they’ll have had to use the keyword to find a page with a spelling variation that could have triggered a content match advert, and then stuffed the referrer with that. The question is… why would they bother? Until I can understand an economic motive to go this level of work, I’m going to assume that, for this instance, there is a low incentive for the user to lie about the referral source.

Had this genuinely been a content network click, there *is* an economic incentive to fake the browsers information - it deflects attention from a real source of low quality clicks. Only the “gclid” can reveal where the impression was actually served, and Google appear to be the only organisation that can decode the meaning of the gclid value.

There is one additional clue as to what is happening, and the dates. I was initially running this campaign only on Google Search. I enabled the Partner Search Network on Thursday 23rd this week. Screenshot from the Account History with identifying data removed:

These types of click only happen when the Search Network is enabled. They disappear when using only Google Search.

Additionally note that I have excluded 404 pages, war pages, domain parks, etc from these campaigns. So there’s no reason for anything remotely resembling a content network advert to appear. I’ve done my best to remove any reason to show these adverts for any reason other than keyword search.

A completely inappropriate context (liver scores), on a targeting method I’ve denied.

Does it get worse than that?

Could Google have already excluded this click from my clients’ bill? Quite possibly. But who can tell - Google won’t offer a click by click itemisation of which clicks are billed and which are excluded. So you have to vet everything and appeal everything. Extra costs for the client - adding to advertising costs.

Ignoring the arbitrage

I’m not going to get started on the arbitrage - see that Ask advert? Ask resells Google Keyword Search adverts. So the low cost Content Match advert brings people to Ask for Keyword Search, amplifying Ask revenues.

The value to *advertisers* of this type of arbitrage is completely a different question.

Questions

Wall Street Analysts - want to know why Google’s result are better? Does this example suggest a mechanism?

Advertisers? Want to know why your ROI goes down as well as up? Do you check your referral sources exist and are relevant to the type of advertising that you paid for?

Search users? Ever wondered why some adverts seem so poorly aimed? It may not be the advertiser choosing inappropriate keywords and sites, it might be Google’s greed. OTOH, I see so many badly designed AdWords accounts that I wouldn’t be surprised if you did see a lot of irrelevant adverts.

Why is Google so nasty about landing page quality scores and so ineffectual at matching search queries and adverts? Is it that they have a large stock of unsold inventory and they throw any advert at that to see what sticks? Should advertisers treat Google’s apparent interest in Quality Scores as a way to raise expectations that Google is as diligent on search queries - a marketing technique to raise advertiser’s bids in the face of a variable quality searches?

Conclusions

I’ve fired off a pretty stroppy email to my account rep. I’ll let you know how it goes.