Google Adwords Rip-Off
Every business wants a 1st place ranking on Google. More leads and more business, what business wouldn’t be tempted by that.
Before Google’s advertising program ‘Adwords’ appeared on the scene, creating a Google friendly website and targeting the free organic listing was the only option. In stepped Adwords, this offered businesses the opportunity for a page 1 ranking in no time at all, albeit a paid option.
(The adwords listings appear in the red boxes, the organic listings in the Google box)
Now Adwords management companies can deliver first page results and plenty offer a great service in doing so.
However over the last couple of years I’ve spoken to quite a few people and clients that have been offered Adwords management and 1st page rankings from companies claiming they are somehow associated with Google, and are authorised Adwords resellers when clearly they aren’t. The sales pitch is misleading and the service that they offer although it sounds like a great deal isn’t quite as good as it seems.
The pitch usually includes:
1. First page on Google permanently over the duration of the contract
2. Unlimited clicks for the traffic that will go through your website
3. 24 hour, 7 days a week listing.
4. Buy in bulk keyword offers
Number 4 is a falsehood, and if you’ve a daily budget then the others are clearly untrue as well.
I was recently speaking with someone who ran a campaign with one of these companies.
He was originally offered 5 keywords for £99 pounds for the 1st month and a small set-up fee of £30. For good measure an additional keyword was thrown in and the set-up fee waived.
The cost of the clicks came out of the £99, which was a nice sweetener. But hold on isn’t there an obvious conflict of interests here? the less clicks you have the more money they make.
The keywords were also very low competition and the number of search also very low.
I had a look at the report and what’s interesting is that atleast 4 of the keywords were pure rubbish, not just long tail keyword but non-existant terms that would never drive more than a couple of people to the site over the course of a year. The 2 major keywords according to Google estimates could be in position 1-3 for 4p, and with only 4 or 5 ads showing for those terms a top 3 placement isn’t going to break the bank. In fact if there was more than a few pounds of traffic through the pay per click adwords I’d be absolutely amazed.
When I had a look at the report, I noticed that nowhere does it mention clicks, it actually mentions impressions!
In the print in the email with the report it states ‘Impressions are the number of people that have actually seen your advert in google.co.uk’.
So when someone does a search on one of those 5/6 keyword terms that counts as an impression even though there’s no click thru to the site. It’s all bull.
With impressions for the month just over 100, even with a click thru rate of 5% that’s 5 clicks. Looking at Google Analytics for the main term and the only one that has a change of driving any traffic at all there was just 5 clicks, and the time spent on the website was minimal.
The report also noted that the terms were exact match, and that extensive keyword research had been conducted (ha ha).
It sounds like a good deal to an unsuspecting client but it’s Limited Adwords without the keyword research, campaign management and accountability.
I understand that for a £99 pound Adwords campaign the company can’t promise the earth, and that they have their costs, but atleast some amount of honesty and visibility might not be too much to ask for. The value the client was getting was also very poor.
You can find a list of authorised Google Adwords Resellers here.
Interestingly when you conduct a search on the name of one of these companies a listing comes up for from Google to ‘use an authorised’ reseller.
May 31st, 2009 at 7:52 am
I think there’s some very high level activity over at Google in response to this particular company. They’ve also featured in a number of press stories about their sales techniques and false claims. Here’s some background on other similar companies – http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=5a04565d4afe39d7&hl=en – and there are quite a few private threads going on about this issue.
Also try searching google news for matchmaker – http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=matchmaker+marketing
Rgds
Richard
May 31st, 2009 at 8:52 am
Richard, they certainly seem to be causing quite a stir. Here’s another couple of posts http://www.irishbusinesswomen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12530
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=88096
June 10th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Interesting post, keep the good stuff coming, good content appreciated!
June 28th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Very interesting. I have heard a lot about these AdWords resellers in the forums. Thought they would probably be bad news. It is easy enough for people to manage their own Adwords account with a bit of training.
June 29th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Hi David,
With a bit of training website owners could certainly get more value for their money than the poor service that many of these companies are providing.
How hard could it be to set up and run a 5 keyword phrase campaign, fire everything at the homepage and do no or very little conversion testing, monitoring, reporting and so.
They can get away with it as sounds like a great deal ‘Page 1 of Google….in minutes’ and the client is non the wiser.
September 20th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Michael, I have heard from at least 2 other people who have been taken on by a very similar scam. In this case it was ‘Lavora Search Marketing’.
(And they were surprised when it generated no new business for them in the first month!)
September 21st, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Yes I’ve read a few forum posts about the company that you mention.
All sounds good to those that don’t know any better, but dig deeper and it’s not quite the offer that is promised.
October 21st, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I have worked for this kind of companies and just wanted to add a new one on the market: storm media in spain. be aware….
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
We have used Storm Media – they ripped us off for £364 and only got us 5000 IMPRESSIONS (in one month), I couldn’t believe how bad they were and how stupid I was!
January 11th, 2010 at 7:21 am
I had a sales pitch vie telephone out of Span from a guy called Reggie from StormMedia.eu They tried to say they were an Authorised Google Reseller. I asked them to prove it and they backed away very quickly saying that anyone with a Google account could claim to be a Google reseller. I then read their terms and conditions. Google is not mentioned anywhere. I then ran their terms and conditions through copyscape. Very interesting results
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
January 25th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Hi Michael, great article. I’ve tracked it on my blog so my readers can take note – valuable read.
http://blog.thedesignloft.co.uk
January 26th, 2010 at 9:03 am
[...] out Michael’s Google AdWords Rip-Off article for the full breakdown of his [...]
March 12th, 2010 at 7:33 am
Hi Philip,
Sorry to hear about your situation. Unfortunately you’ve gotta be on the ball with some disreputable companies.
April 11th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Watch Out!!!!!!
Stormmedia changed company’s name!!!!
BAMBOO-MEDIA. web site:bamboo-media.net -
same people -same rip off- moved out but still in Spain same area. News to be spread in order to prevent them to carry on with the missales. Johan
April 14th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
My advice is to try adwords yourself by popping into SEO forums for advice and learn from scratch with a small budget as a trial. It really is easy. Otherwise, try contacting an independent SEO consultant not a large company who are hell bent on targets and ripping people off when they have no idea about the difference between organic search and paid search (PPC)
I have spent time reading about these guys on the internet and I was shocked over and over again with the response. I will be linking to this article thank you for taking the time to write this.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Hi Nina,
Thanks for the comments, just had a sneaky look at your blog and it looks interesting. Will pop back for a good read.
cheers,
Michael.
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Hi Michael,
Good to create awareness on this subject. I wrote a similar page on my site (http://www.willwilliamsmarketing.co.uk/adwords-marketing/the-adwords-cold-calling-companies). I even had some angry calls from the companies in question – who I gladly argued with. They have really interfered with the publics perception of AdWords – relentless cold calling has left people associating AdWords with something tacky and dishonest – which is a shame.
Best regards,
Will
June 11th, 2010 at 9:19 am
just spoke to http://www.bamboo-media.net and doing a whois lookup shows that they are infact storm media, incidently they actually deny that they are affiliated with them although their websites are almost identical and both registered to storm media (alarm bells), the spanish manger(woman) on the phone was extremely bolshey and arrogant when i confronted her, i was transfered after a rather well spoken english phone sales person didnt know what to say after i bought up “scam”. They where also reluctant to give me a companys address or vat number, the woman infact said that i didnt even need their vat number at all. :S lol. Its a good job i researched about the company before i got trapped, it seems they do offer you the first place google adwords for a while from what ive read but then make it very difficult for you to end the inital 30 day contract.
June 30th, 2010 at 8:55 am
Yesterday I had a call from “Platform Media” offering google positions. They sounded dodgy and very Storm Media like. I asked her if they where related to Storm Media, she said no. Same con though.
July 7th, 2010 at 7:48 am
If they call, ask for a price on the keywords ’storm media adwords ripoff, SEO snake oil’ for your new anti scammers blog. Simple.
August 5th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Great article, I work for one of the 7 authorised resellers in the UK and help SMB’s generate business locally with a solid ROI based PPC strategy. I’ve met so many business owners that have been sucked in to the type of product you’re talking about. Unfortunately, the “top of Google” marketers are draining the PPC credibility from the small business owner…once bitten, twice shy and all that. By the way the link to the authorised reseller list has changes, you can now find it here: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/adwords/reseller/directory.html
November 10th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
It’s quite easy for these companies to sound confident and convincing on the phone, plus only one month commitment gives people the ’suck and see’ idea to try it out once so even if they get a month out of each customer they are still making money but providing poor service…which anyone can do once, then you just walk away. The key is to carefully research each of your sales avenues on-line and off-line. A mixture of approaches will tell you what works best for your money. But getting back to the point – set up your own basic AdWords campaign first is a good idea and you can set your own budget. Ease yourself into the whole concept and learn a little. Take note of the 7 current offical resllers for AdWord campaigns folks! Thanks Mr Wall for the forum post and background!
March 9th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Ive worked for alotof these companies iv working sales for 5 years im from manchester uk there about 10 major companies in manchester & hundreds setin up each day i worked for jump up media/top spot marketing/ rank right/ red glow solutions th elist goes on lol
most of these companies are sales target driven there not in partnership there in compatition with each other lol
9/10 of them dont have a clue about adwords & saleman are makin a livin so dont blam them there told wot to do when i first entered the industy i believed we were helping business but there not there destroying them .
there are sum reliable companies out there there not all the same which is a shame coz this sort of behaviour kills off an market. in regard to authorised or credit ressellers most of theses comapnies are now linking qualified indivduals to there company to look more creditable who you gonna trust
iv now passed one of my adwords test and doing the rest soon & im gonna set up an honest ppc company but wud any1 believe me? doubt it lol
July 29th, 2011 at 6:55 am
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October 20th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Here’s another one Jump Up Media.
The worst thing is I refuse to speak to cold callers at all in my personal life, so why I chose to at the start of my business I wil never know. The truth is a smooth talking guy on the phone with seemingly the answer to my prayers. I should thank them my £99 has paid for my Google Ads education I now have confidence and understanding enough to manage my own Google Ads campaign its also paid for a short sharp lesson, which will not need to be repeated, I receieved a telephone conversation this morning from another cold caller, different scam but I didn’t fall for this one. The real damage to start up business owners is not the money, its the feeling foolish when you realise you’ve been had. Put it behind you, warn as many people as you can through these kinds of sites and then move on.