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Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

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Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#211

Post by coldtea »

kyledrake wrote: post #169
WhitneyLand wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My site was targeted with millions of low quality links Are you saying competitors maliciously sabotaged your ranking? Or that you bought SEO services from an unscrupulous company?

Does Google actually punish sites for buying spam SEO, or is this speculation without evidence? They don't publish page rank scores anymore, so how can one know? How does one determine their site is "punished"? I have seen the consequences of paying for SEO. They spam your site URL on random web forums. If you pay for SEO, you are very likely paying people to use bots and sweatshops to spam your site url via low qual…

>Does Google actually punish sites for buying spam SEO, or is this speculation without evidence? They don't publish page rank scores anymore, so how can one know?

Because they tell us:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

>How does one determine their site is "punished"?

Because it suddenly falls behind in results?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#212

Post by marklgr »

bumblebeard wrote: post #63
victorhooi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is "dumb" amounts of money? If by dumb, you mean enough for authors to get by, then you are probably in the minority. People love talking about how much they hate ads, and how, no, they're not cheap, they would totally pay for content. Let's be honest - internet users are cheap. They want stuff for free. And if site A starts charging, they will jump ship to site B, until eventually it's a race to the bot…

I guess I'm cheap then. I have no interest in paying any amount of money to read most of the things I read online. It seems to me that it's not so much that people are demanding this content for free as it is that people don't think it's worth paying for. It's not that I particularly wanted to see an article about the usefulness of advertising as it is that it's something to read on the bus. I would probably just loo…

"Websites love talking about how much their readers are cheap, and how, no, they don't publish crappy content, they would totally check facts and whatnot.

Let's be honest - many websites are after monetizing whatever they can. They want content cheap to produce. And if readers don't want to buy it, they'll sell your attention and your privacy to advertisers, until eventually it's a race to the bottom."

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#213

Post by agopaul »

matt4077 wrote: post #195
jondubois wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same when I tried LinkedIn ads... It doesn't even compare to a poorly targeted Reddit post. I don't know if big companies get special treatment, but as a small startup, these ad networks just don't seem to work at all. Sometimes I feel that the reason why big companies advertise through Facebook/LinkedIn/Google is not to promote themselves, but rather, to bleed small competitors out of business by inflatin…

I'm spending ca $150/mo on google and getting a few hundred in revenue from it – not even including repeat purchases from these sales (about 80% y/y retention). It's been like that for 8 years. Facebook on the other hand... Probably spend $2000 trying all sorts of things over the years and I'm not sure if there's a single new customer that can be attributed to it.

Are those Google ads Search or Display?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#214

Post by sundvor »

bumblebeard wrote: post #63
victorhooi wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is "dumb" amounts of money? If by dumb, you mean enough for authors to get by, then you are probably in the minority. People love talking about how much they hate ads, and how, no, they're not cheap, they would totally pay for content. Let's be honest - internet users are cheap. They want stuff for free. And if site A starts charging, they will jump ship to site B, until eventually it's a race to the bot…

I guess I'm cheap then. I have no interest in paying any amount of money to read most of the things I read online. It seems to me that it's not so much that people are demanding this content for free as it is that people don't think it's worth paying for. It's not that I particularly wanted to see an article about the usefulness of advertising as it is that it's something to read on the bus. I would probably just loo…

I for one will NOT use an Android app if there's no premium, ad free version of one.

I'll readily buy the ad-free version if it's any good, and I have the track record to prove it.

I've completely given up trying to control the torrent of spammy apps (games) on my son's IPad. His next device will be an Android.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#215

Post by bobajeff »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #208
bobajeff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe ad networks (that rely on third-party scripts and cookies) days are numbered thanks to adblocking. The only ads I see surviving long term are affiliate links, sponcered content and static native ads. The problems with ad networks are too big to go on for very long. Poor user experience, Ad fraud, malware, the indiscriminate gathering and selling of user information. It's just a matter of time 'till everyone…

I'm not sure sponsored content is better.

I make no claims about what is ideal only what is likely to survive.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#216

Post by pryelluw »

WalterSear wrote: post #145
point78 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a bad product

That's not an unfair conclusion. However, our retention rate after the first order was spectacular, and we slowly gathered a core group of users who were using our services exclusively. Unfortunately, despite providing a ubiquitous business service, we couldn't gather customers fast enough to float the boat.

Sometimes we fail even if the stars are aligned. It sucks, but the market is irrational.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#217

Post by disiplus »

crablar wrote: post #107

This is due to the ad fraud bubble. We have covered it extensively on Software Engineering Daily: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/?s=ad+fraud

we have those, the amount of invalid clicks in adwords does not mach the ones i see in my logs, there 20-40% difference where adwords shows less. i cannot fix that from my site. i block ip ranges when i find them but they can just move.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#219

Post by argonaut »

abalashov wrote: post #45
soared wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's very possibly an attribution issue. Those clicks led to traffic, and if the sales cycle is long those clicks will take months to convert. Unless you are tracking sessions back to their source months after the fact, you can't really know if those ads led to conversions or not.

No, not with definitive certainty. However, the traffic volumes involved are low enough that I have a pretty good idea of how people that buy came to know about the product or came to visit the site for the first time. A high percentage of the time, they tell me. Never, ever have I heard, "Saw your ad on Google".

Have you ever heard that they saw you on Google at all? I feel like a lot of people fail to remember the distinction between ad results and search results.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#220

Post by iopq »

coldtea wrote: post #210
iopq wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese businesses don't care, Russian businesses don't care, etc.

Says who?

Nobody in China uses Google other than English speakers. Google is notoriously bad at breaking Chinese characters up into words.

Few people in Russia use Google for Russian language searches, this is because Google is not as good at declining Russian nouns and conjugating Russian verbs. Yandex gives more results of a higher quality for certain searches.

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