Am I the only one who had to set their browser zoom to 500% to read the contents of the screenshots?
Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
21–30 of 163 posts
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#22Every once in a while I'll do a search on Google from a browser with no blocker for something like 'ebay' or some other big brand name and I'm always surprised to see that big brand name has bought ads for themselves, it never made sense since they're always the first search result anyways. Now I can only assume two things... 1. Some number of those ads were scams 2. Some large number of people just blindly click on…
Bidding on your own company name is very cheap because your site has a very high quality score for that keyword (ie. Google's algorithms think the users query will be answered by going to that domain). A high quality score gives you an effective discount in the ad auction. You might only need to pay $0.01 for that ad, whereas your competitor would need to pay $1
>> Google's algorithms think the users query will be answered by going to that domain
That's BS semantics. Their algorithms are based more on the age of your domain and other technicalities, rather than some hypothetical meaning of "search intention".
Today you're much more likely to get directed to some SEO-optimised highly monetised blog content because they bought an incredibly old domain name rather than what you're actually looking for.
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#23Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#24My project has been having fake ads bought on Google to serve malware for a year now and Google doesn't seem to care. At best they might take down one ad, but there are always more.
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#25Every once in a while I'll do a search on Google from a browser with no blocker for something like 'ebay' or some other big brand name and I'm always surprised to see that big brand name has bought ads for themselves, it never made sense since they're always the first search result anyways. Now I can only assume two things... 1. Some number of those ads were scams 2. Some large number of people just blindly click on…
It may be that the bidder is an affiliate that gets a commission on your purchase, not the brand owner. They're just trying to get last click on the thing you were about to buy anyway.
I worked in AdWords 12 years ago and this was dominant. Not sure how it is today.
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#26Woah, that's extra evil... but presumably also easy to track down, since someone will have to have a google ad account in order to do this? Is there a federal prosecutor listening? Hello, anyone?
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bidding on your own company name is very cheap because your site has a very high quality score for that keyword (ie. Google's algorithms think the users query will be answered by going to that domain). A high quality score gives you an effective discount in the ad auction. You might only need to pay $0.01 for that ad, whereas your competitor would need to pay $1
>> Google's algorithms think the users query will be answered by going to that domain That's BS semantics. Their algorithms are based more on the age of your domain and other technicalities, rather than some hypothetical meaning of "search intention". Today you're much more likely to get directed to some SEO-optimised highly monetised blog content because they bought an incredibly old domain name rather than what you…
> Their algorithms are based more on the age of your domain and other technicalities
One of which is "dwell time" and another is "bounce rate". Both those correlate highly with how well the site matches the users intention.
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bidding on your own company name is very cheap because your site has a very high quality score for that keyword (ie. Google's algorithms think the users query will be answered by going to that domain). A high quality score gives you an effective discount in the ad auction. You might only need to pay $0.01 for that ad, whereas your competitor would need to pay $1
>> Google's algorithms think the users query will be answered by going to that domain That's BS semantics. Their algorithms are based more on the age of your domain and other technicalities, rather than some hypothetical meaning of "search intention". Today you're much more likely to get directed to some SEO-optimised highly monetised blog content because they bought an incredibly old domain name rather than what you…
Bounce rate is a metric. If the person clicking decides to stay on your web site after the click-through, then that's a good measure of ad relevance.
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#29Wow. This is a nice find - luckily I never click on ads links but this is extremely misleading and dangerous.
Imagine a link to your bank or crypto exchange, and it takes you to a phishing site - boom - money gone.
Re: Google AdWords Exploit Seen in the Wild
#30Every once in a while I'll do a search on Google from a browser with no blocker for something like 'ebay' or some other big brand name and I'm always surprised to see that big brand name has bought ads for themselves, it never made sense since they're always the first search result anyways. Now I can only assume two things... 1. Some number of those ads were scams 2. Some large number of people just blindly click on…
It used to be that on some web browsers, the background color for adwords and organic search was hard or impossible to distinguish. eBay is paying for placement and it also wants to mitigate potential issues where the organic result is not their site, they have top of page presence (if adblocker is turned off).