Your PPC Sucks

Let’s start this post with answering a common question that will come to mind. No, I don’t know why anyone was searching for ‘leg amputees‘ on Google. But, a user gave me a link to the results page and I had to write a post about it.

“So, honey – when does our new leg amputee come in? You know we have to keep up with the Jones’s!”

What I really want to know is, what word was Shopzilla.com bidding on? Leg or Amputees?

Neither. They are actually bidding on the term “Leg Amputees” exactly. Naturally, I HAD to see the landing page so I clicked through. (is that click fraud? . . . sorry)

They did a great job building up my excitement! “You’re about to discover great deals on…. Leg Amputees”. Yes! I can’t wait!

.  .  .  . sad panda. It was disappointing. Nothing. They don’t actually sell any leg amputees.

Screw you Shopzilla!

I am sure you share in my disappointment, and I am sorry you can’t actually buy a leg amputee, but I have good new for those with a very specific kind of fetish: (still using the same search term ‘leg amputees’).

I love the internet, it does so much for all of us.

BlackHateBook.com? ….. There’s a slight difference between ‘hate’ and ‘hat’. This was from a PPC advertisement inside g-mail from one of our readers who’s e-mail content mentions SEO enough to warrant advertisements about it.

I’ve had it happen a million times. Have a little to drink, find a great domain, be in awe that it’s available and, boom. Buy it.

Only later realizing of course your domain name itself doesn’t promote a book about black hat practices, it appears to promote black hate and you have to live with it. “Meh, whatever.. it’s just a domain, no one cares about those.” (even though blackhatlove.com is available)

Sure enough, www.blackhatebook.com is the REAL domain for these guys. But it is better in their ‘dirty SEO tactics’ hands than as a KKK operated website.

They do rank well for a lot of related terms right now, but we definitely don’t support ‘blackhat seo practices or blackhate’ display url’s. Tip: Pick a non-offensive domain name, one that is easily remembered, and spell it correctly for the word you are trying to use.

Thanks for the user submission for this one!

We had about 4 submissions over the weekend but the contact form, file attachement feature wasn’t working properly. If you sent something in, please resend it.

Just when I finished beating up Yahoo for having a horrible ad serving engine and failure to care about keyword-ad relevancy, they amazed me yet again. I searched for Mickey Mouse, and right in the middle of their ads was this little gem:

I’m no genius, but www.my.tupperware.com isn’t trying sell anything to do with Mickey Mouse in this bad ppc ad. Kids are out searching for mickey mouse all the time, might as well try and get them addicted sucked into the Tupperware parties scheme like a broke soccer mom who thinks their salvation is in a $60, 7 piece ‘heat ‘n serve’ set complete with a ‘no worry automatic valve’.

( … I want that … )

Just in case, I went back to Yahoo and re-performed my search to check out the landing page for that ad.

I mean…. if we are talking about a failure to be relevant to the users search, maybe they had a good landing page.

Nope. A log in page.

No selling of anything. No content of any kind. Nothing to do with Mickey Mouse.

Even IF the keyword and ad’s were 100% about Tupperware, and the searcher really was trying to find a website the sells or has info about it: My.Tupperware.com chose probably the least relevant page on their site.

While looking for a theme to set up this very blog, I searched “Free wordpress themes” on Google. iThemes.com came up at the top with an ad that was somewhat enticing. I wanted a professionally designed theme that I could modify easily, and their add looked like it was going to give me what I wanted.

I should have known though. What were the odds that when I searched for ‘free wordpress themes’ that I could actually find a PPC ad for someone offering free products? Rule #1 for eCommerce sites: Don’t let yourself waste so much stinking money on users who don’t want to buy anything!

No mention of 'Free' in the ad, but it didn't pre-qualify with being 'paid' only either.

I searched for "Free WordPress Themes"

Remembering that I searched for “Free Wordpress Themes”, it’s crucial to pre-qualify your users by either mentioning you only offer paid products (and don’t trust that a Google Checkout button will do the trick) or by adding -Free as a negative keyword in your campaign.

Seriously? Save yourself some money iThemes. PPC can be a money-pit for your business if you make this mistake. Businesses too often will look at their PPC campaigns, see money being spent and not enough conversions to make it worth it so they’ll cut it with out knowing their clicks are coming from people wanting FREE STUFF!