Why PPC Is Ruining The Web

Everywhere you go on the web you see pay per click ads. They are cluttering up pages and overshadowing the content you are trying to find. It used to be flashy banner ads that were the bane of the Internet, now Google Ads are taking up valuable web properties and making it harder for users to find what they are looking for. Text ad boxes can fill up to 30% of the screen real estate on some sites, and in a lot of cases they are appearing at the top of content pages and therefore BECOMING the content. The ads are what crafty webmasters are now using as the point to which their traffic is driven to.

This is the exact opposite of what search engines like Google preach, yet they are one of the biggest purveyors of text ad boxes with their AdSense program. It is not just the cluttering, the cost per click is being driven up by ad-only sites and are often denizens of click-fraud. Advanced practices like online proxy servers and cookie flushing plugins give AdSense site owners the ability to click on their own ads anonymously. This type of action and fraud is not easily apparent to Google since browsers like FireFox make it easy for users to hide their IP and online identity.

Pay Per Click Problems On The Internet

The major issues that involve pay per click can be broken down into two categories:

1. Usability Problems - these issues revolve around how PPC ads are cluttering sites and making it harder for users to find answers. The usability problems are looked at from a user standpoint.
2. Advertiser Problems - these issues are with the ads themselves. Click fraud, over priced keywords and low conversion rates are covered here.

Pay Per Click Usability Problems

We have already talked about how these ads are cluttering up sites and are making it difficult to find legitimate content. Sites that are ad-only are slowly taking over placement from legitimate, content oriented sites. The more that sites fill up their spaces with text ad boxes, the less real content can take the limelight.

A content oriented website must follow website usability rules to be successful. By putting AdSense ads in prevalent positions, a greedy webmaster is making it harder for users to navigate and find the products and services that they are looking for. Real content is being confused with paid ads. These types of sites are looking for quick money, not return visitors. The only way to stop this is to leave these sites when you come upon them. They are parasites and make honest hard working legitimate webmasters spend more time and money than we should. They are in direct conflict with Google’s policies, yet Google does nothing about it. It is up to us to not give them any credence by NOT CLICKING ON PAID ADS!

Advertiser PPC Problems

People that spend money on pay per click ads are not getting the return on investment (ROI) that they did just a couple of years ago. The reasons for this are many. The more experienced a web user is, the less likely they are to click on sponsored or paid results in the SERP’s. They are even less likely to click on them on other sites that use AdSense. That leaves less experienced users who are much less likely to convert into a lead or a sale and click fraud.

Click fraud is a huge problem for both publishers and advertisers. In case you don’t know the difference, an advertiser is a website that buys paid ads, a publisher is the site on which the paid ad is hosted on. Both parties can be victims to click fraud. Advertisers can have their ads clicked on by their competitors who want to drive them out of the bidding or just want to cost the advertiser money. This is the type of click fraud that is more well known. Google spends millions in click fraud reimbursement when advertisers can bring them proof that their ads have been clicked on in a fraudulent manner. The thing is, Google doesn’t reimburse money, they just give credit to the advertisers account, so the cycle just begins again.

The more prevalent and often less discussed type of click fraud comes from the publisher. Sites that are ad-only are more likely to click on their own ads and cost advertisers money. Google has a very hard time tracking this type of fraud thanks to the privacy technology that exists. I can spoof anybody using FireFox. A site or Google will have no idea what my IP is, what OS I am using or even where I am geographically. I am not a hacker and don’t know anything about programming, but I can hide my identity. These ad-only sites that live on click fraud have many resources available to them. There are keyword sites and services that you can buy that will give you a list of the highest paid keyword clicks on the Internet. They get updated daily.

When you see sites that are sub domains with no relevance to the keyword phrase, more than likely they are a fraud. An example would be: new-york-injury-attourney.somethingalltogetherdifferent.con. These sites will have little content, just enough to spoof the Google AdWords server enough to show ads for injury lawyers in new York City. Keywords having to do with personal injury are good for $25 to $50 a click in LA and New York.

If you run across these types of sites, don’t click on their links, leave! If you are an advertiser, research your keywords in Google and make a list of bogus ad-only sites. You can add them to the filter in AdWords. Be wary of any click charges that come outside of the true SERP’s. Make claims to Google when your traffic is not converting or if your analytics don’t match up to the clicks.

The only way we can do anything about this is to not go on ad-only sites. If they don’t make money, they will eventually go away. Maybe someday Google will adhere to their own policies and declare war on spam sites and ad-only pages.