Google Is Fantastic

get one of your members to open an adwords account, because once your banned your banned forever.



[gratitous link drop removed]

I can certainly understand why you want back in and why you feel you should be, but you also have to look at things from Google's side. How do they know you didn't authorize your employee to make the fraudulent clicks and how are they supposed to know it won't happen again.

I'm not sure what response you expected to get, but I think all you can do is sincerely apologize to Google and tell them the steps you've taken to ensure it will never happen again. After that though it's up to them to decide what to do.

I know if I ran a program and clearly stated the rules for that program and caught someone violating those rules in what amounts to stealing from other of my clients I wouldn't let that the someone back in the program.

We have written a very well though-out apology letter to google.. and listed our problems and solutions..

and still.. they said "no".

So what is this I hear about having someone else start the account?

Will they have to make a seperate domain name that re-directs to our website?

how can I get back on google.. without being caught. ? all we want to do is put our company back on the most popular search engine in the world..

its not like we are selling porn subscriptions here.. we work the the government for heavens sake.

I think I'd side with Vangogh on this one. Although it is very understandable what has happend, if you were to look at it from their point... Would you risk the reputation and potentional income for Millions of dollars from other users getting ticked off, or would you just cut out the one client that commited fraud. I understand that it wasn't you or your company that tried to commit fraud.

Let's face it, when the corporate scandals were all over the place, investors didn't care if the President/CEO purposely commited fraud, they just didn't want to be burned from such scandals and the company ultimately pays the price. That is the nature of business.

I would suggest an extremely detailed letter along with immediate dismissal of the employee. Should that fail, I would think that your only option would be to start a new company with new contact information.

Another way to see it from Google's side is that your employee was basically stealing from another Google advertiser. If that advertiser spends a lot more money than you do Google is going to do more to protect them.

I think all you can do is what zincoxide said. Write them as detailed a letter as you can. I would think you would definitely need to fire the employee. I would think you would want to anyway since there's no telling what that employee would do in the future. But still in the end it's up to Google.

No matter what the situation it comes down to your company attempted to steal from Google and other Google customers. You got caught and now are sorry. All you can do is beg forgiveness, but it's going to be up to Google and I'm pretty sure as far as they're concerned the money you might generate for them probably isn't worth the risk of your company commiting fraud again.

we spent 5,000 a month in advertising with google.. and we were always at the top..

so.. as far as "protecting the bigger client".. thats out of the question..

could it also be that they havent let us back on because of us joining in on the class-action lawsuit against Google's Adwords program?

haha... That's funny. You're complaining about them kicking you out but you are suing them (class action maybe but still, that's funny). I doubt that has anything to do with it though.

First, $5000/mth to google is peanuts. I have a relative who probably spends into the $100,000's on google every year (and he is small compared to some of his competition). No, what I meant was if they keep you in with unethical practices going on (regardless of if you meant to) they will probably lose in reputation which with eventually lead to lost income.

You actually should respect the decision they have made. They have actually chosen the high road. With most companies now a days they make their decisions on the bottom line, and as you said, you spend big bucks. So, you have to commend a company that will stick by its policies regardless of income.

Please don't take my comments as an offensive gesture, they are in no way intended that way. I forgot about that lawsuit, it could be because of the lawsuit (no that you have joined it), but that they have to be EXTRA careful on their lenience now.

Yeah $5,000 a month may be alot to you or me or many of us here, but it's not a lot of money and it was just one possibilty. It is funny though to be part of a class action suit against Google for click fraud while being guilty of click fruad at the same time.

Like zincoxide I'm not trying at all to acuse you of anything. Regardless of whether the act was intentional or not your company still committed click-fraud. Why should Google believe it wasn't intentional and why should they believe it won't happen again?

Also whether or not the company authorized an employee to do something that company is still responsible for the emplyee's actions. The company did make the decision to hire the person after all. Was it possible to know the kind of person was being hired? Are there procedures in place to ensure something like this wouldn't happen? How was the employee trained?

I doubt being part of the class action suit is the reason, but you never know. Google is simply protecting their interests, which is the integrity of the AdWords system.

we have all come to conlusion that Google made a good decision. Ok Guys Im not blaming them for that.

Despite my advertisement loss, I actually commend them for being strict and sticking to their policies.

It was not my decision to become part of this lawsuit, it was previous management's decision.

All I care about is getting back on the "list"

are there ways around it?

P.S - i really appreciate your guys help. You guys are honest and punctual.

Also..

we are only advertising through Yahoo & MSN..

do you guys recommend any other forms of marketing online?

Please take pity on me.. Im new to the internet-marketing world.. Im good as far as the technical stuff.. but Im just now getting my feet wet.. and progressivley understanding this click-marketing campaign.

Thanks Again

Something doesn't add up here.

One of your employees committed an act of click fraud on a competitor's ad, and they're stopping you from advertising as punishment?!?!?!?! Doesn't the punishment have to fit the crime?

It would make more sense for you guys to have to pay for the employee's clicks or get banned from SERPs organically.

I know Google's stance is "do no evil" but that's a little much.

If you're looking for other ways to advertise, the best thing you can do is "as much as is reasonably possible." If you can see an ROI in an advertising opportunity, and a LEGIT one (not some "buy a pixel ad and maybe see a search engine rank increase in MSN since a legit engine would never catch it" crap), go for it.

Something doesn't add up here.

One of your employees committed an act of click fraud on a competitor's ad, and they're stopping you from advertising as punishment?!?!?!?! Doesn't the punishment have to fit the crime?

Adam, I think I would have to disagree with you here. As unfortunate as it is for factory supply, the crime does fit the punishment. It is no secret that you will get banned for click fraud, therefore I think it makes perfect sense. As a business owner, you can't tolerate those types of activities regardless of the reason.

But, to get back on topic... Advertising/Marketing.

There are probably a couple of things that you could do but I wouldn't imagine any of them will/would compare to the business possible from Google. I'm not in your business so I probably can't give you much help in the specifics but, maybe there is a way that you can "piggyback" off some other sites. Meaning, setup some kind of affilliates program or something.

There is obviously, directory listings that you can submit for. And, depending on where you are (I have no idea where the 727 area code is), you could probably get an online listing in the yellow pages and similar paid directories.

Also, there is alway an SEO campaign that you could setup which would focus on getting organic traffic to you, it looks as though you are still listed in Google's organic listings.

That's probably where I would go with it. I mean for $5000 /mth you can probably get Vangogh to do some sort of SEO campaign for you (although I have no idea if he does that, I just know that man is a wealth of knowledge with that stuff from helping me out). That I think would be your best option because it is kind of like *topping* google in the sense that they kick you off their PAID advertising and you go and stick it to them by getting to the top of their free listings.

But, I know that you can do a lot with the SEO stuff.

factorysupply hope we haven't been too hard on you. I know that what you ideally want is to get back into the program. I think all you can though is ask Google. be as polite as possible, apologize as much as you can and beg their forgiveness. Assure them with as much proof as you can that it will never happen again. There's just not going to be a guarantee. It's their program and it's up to them in the end. Even if you don't get in now you might try again down the line. Time may help here.

zincoxide is right in that you can concentrate more on seo when it comes to Google. Hopefully you have been anyway, but just because AdWords isn't going to be an avenue at the moment you can still get traffic from Google. And the beauty od seo your links in the results will tend to be longer lived than through AdWords. It can be a lot of work getting there, and it still requires work to maintain a good rank, but you don't have to pay for the clicks and most studies show more people click on the organic results than the paid results.

There are plenty of other things you can do to market the site. You can always spend some of that $5000 to increase your other campaigns or try some more traditional offline marketing.

Since your sales are going to be business to business you might more direct advertising in places where factories look. I'm not sure where those are off the top of my head, but I'm sure they look in places other than search engines.

With the money you're not spending on AdWords you can probably put together a catalog and mail it to potential customers.

If you solely want to replace the traffic from Google seo is probably your best bet since you can still attract many of the same people that were clicking on the ads. It might be a slower road to get that traffic, but once you get it back it will probably prove to be better
traffic.

Another thing you can do is work on the site to convert more of the visitors you are already getting. Doubling the conversion rate of the site might pay off more than working to get more traffic.

Adam I think the reason behind Google's decision is that being in the AdWords program was the motivation for the click-fraud. Remove the offender from the program you remove the motivation and hence the click-fraud.

I gotta respectfully disagree with you there, vangogh, since there's nothing to stop the same employee from committing the same act on the same competitor. If the ad is clicked fraudulently, the same net gain occurs for Factory Supply and the same net loss occurs for the competitor regardless of whether Factory Supply is running ads.

Let me put a different spin, and use your hosting company as an example. Let's say I see an ad for Bob's hosting, and because clicking on Bob's hosting would hurt Bob and therefore indirectly help you, I click the ad despite having no interest in the service.

I don't even know if you run any Adwords campaigns or not (and to be perfectly frank, it would make no difference to me.) I'd still click the ads. If anything, I might be more likely to commit click fraud at the expense of a competitor. I'd have nothing to lose at that point.

So...what's a more appropriate punishment?

1) Increase the PPC level required for the Factory Supply ads to show up on the first page every time a fraudulent clickthrough occurs. Since the highest-paid ad isn't necessarily the highest-positioned, this is certainly doable and the financial deterrent would be such that it would discourage competitor ad clickthroughs, especially if the FS employee committed the act repeatedly and the PPC level doubled, tripled, quadrupled, whatever.

2) Ban the offender, as I stated earlier, from organic SERPs and force them to join Adwords if they're not there already. That'll learn 'em!

factorysupply: I know this isn't ultimately your fault, and that some jackass created the situation for you. I'm just pointing out that the punishment does nothing to deter the crime.

I see what you mean. And it's true you can still click links fraudulently the same way you can to try to get an AdSense pubisher banned.

I think though that clicking your competitior ads also indirectly drives the cost of your own ads down somewhat which is part of the motivation. I don't use AdWords at the moment so I'm not 100% sure of that. I found a post through Matt C's blog that led me to a report on ckick-fraud.

It's a 47 page PDF, but didn't take too long to read. Probably a lot of stuff in there that you can easily skim. Talked about the motivation for click-fraud and think that's where I got what I said above. Kind of an interesting read if you like those kind of things.

I think Google's thinking though is that most people don't want to get kicked out of AdWords so if that's the punishment they're less likely to click links fraudulently. You're right that the crime can still be committed and after being kicked out of AdWords there isn't any punishment left since you can't kick them out again.

I'm not sure they would want to do anything to the organic SERPs since they say they want to keep the two completely separate. Your first form of punishment sounds pretty interesting though.

So was the employee clicking the adwords adverts of a competitor in order to make them pay for clicks that were not going to lead to sales?
If that is the case i'm affraid i have to say i'm glad you got banned.

Regardless if it was authorized or not, It's a pretty bad thing to do to someone, And something which the company, not the employee, has to take responsibility for.

On a lighter note. It's good to see that google are monitoring this kind of thing.

Adam.. you provide a great point..

and I DO THINK that they should of punished us in other ways rather than kicking us off the podeum all-together.

And about offline marketing.. we actually send out hundreds of catalogs each week.. Full-Page.. Color.. the whole 9.. We get great business and most of our customers are repeat..

Im just wondering what to do with the extra cash we have for marketing.. Pay some idiot to dress like a donkey and wave a sign on the intersection? lol.. I would think not. .

The only way we can increase our sales effectivley with the cash we have.. is to utilize it online..

I understand Organic Search.. and I do know we are listed pretty high on the organic listings... how can we increase that? just increase traffic to the sight? Is that how google ranks the organics higher?

Also.. are there any other 3rd party companies that can get our campaign going on google?

Thanks for all your interest gentlemen/women(if there are any on here).. Its much appreciated.

That is actually another avenue that you might find works... I don't know if it would work or not but there are companies out there that will run an adwords campaign for you. MAYBE being with a reputable company that google recognizes as ethical, they may let you back in under that companies supervision. I would write them another let and tell them that you have fired that employee and have instituted a policy within the company that ZERO tolerance will be given for this behavior. First I would find a company to manage that campaign for you (vangogh might know some companies). Tell google everything again and see what they say!

ADAM... I can see your point and just to be clear I do agree that Google should give the company a warning for the first time maybe even a fine of $5000 or $10000 to stay. BUT, I think that your point about the person committing the click fraud regardless of being an employee or not is wrong. As an employee (I would hope) most people would have some sort of company loyalty, and want to see that company succeed and therefore get a direct benefit of that company succeeding (they get to keep their job). I think that it is unlikely for someone to keep clicking on ads and wasting their time if there is no direct benefit to them.

Being an advertiser of Adwords (no where near factory supply though) I can tell you that I am in a business where it is mostly individual agents advertising on google adwords and not big huge companies. Therefore, in a lot of cases that $100 or $200 extra per month caused by clicking is enough to send them into the red, which in turn would get them to cancel there account and the ultimate benefit would be me getting to the top without increasing my bids.

As far as the cheaper rankings getting to the top, I'm not sure if I buy that from Google. I think they may have changed that. The reason why I say that is because recently I started a google campaign which has exactly 0 competitors (on specific keywords). Google is making be pay in some cases $2-$4 per click for those keywords. There are 0 ads that so up (except mine) and they still make me pay that much. It's ridiculous... I think that they have changed their model, but obviously this is unconfirmed.

Just to further clear up the response of everyone saying "send them another letter"..

we have sent them a letter.. a very clear.. very specific letter of detail that admits our fault as a company.. it states we have fired our employee which commited such acts.. it states that we are under a completely new team of management.. it also states that we will never commit such acts again as it harms our growth as a company not to be on google.. We told the truth and thats all we can say.. we also puckered up on a few cheeks too..

The letter is done.. twice.. and the same response from google.. short.. to the point .. "NO"..

If only we could reach a human-being on a telephone.. we could recieve some sort of discrepenacy from an actual soul..

Google really should rethink how their "ban" can affect a company.. if we werent such a big company.. Google could actually put us out of business..

If they keep following their policy book. word for word.. they will step on a lot of peoples dreams..

Now.. i know that sounds a little too emotional.. But internet-based companies of smaller size.. if something accidentaly happened or something happened beyond their control.. and they get booted from google.. that could instantly destroy their market-base.. and subsequently destroy the business entirely.