Comments on: Questionable Reliability of Google AdWords Metrics

By: Dave Bascom

Dave Bascom — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 01:22:38 +0000

There’s no way Google is manipulating the system. I think Josh’s guess about some kind of auto search bot is much more likely. It could be someone using Web Position or similar software to check their site’s ranking, or someone screen-scaping, or I’ve even heard rumors of people doing this type of thing to screw with competitors’ click through rates while their own ads are paused, but who knows? One thing I’m fairly certain of is that it’s not due to a sudden interest in “utah website design” especially since you didn’t get a single click from all those searches.

I see weird numbers like this much more often from Yahoo than Google, but a lot of times the Yahoo numbers include a bunch of useless (non-converting) clicks as well. Whenever I call Yahoo on it, they look into it and come back to say, “oh, no, they’re legitimate clicks.” But usually end up refunding part of it as a “courtesy.” Consider yourself lucky that none of those nasty little bots clicked on your ads.

By: Joshua Steimle

Joshua Steimle — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:08:59 +0000

It seems highly unlikely. If they were it wouldn’t be hard for evidence of it to get out and that kind of thing could cost them billions. It’s in their best interests for everything to be accurate. Plus they don’t get paid anything for impressions, only for clicks, and I’m not getting any clicks which is what is so weird. However, I still have no idea what’s going on.

Today there have been 128 impressions so far with zero clicks. I’m wondering if there’s just a bug somewhere in their system somewhere.

By: Russell Page

Russell Page — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 02:01:11 +0000

Any chance google is manipulating the system to charge more for ads?