Double Serving Ads

[LittleChips]

Can anyone clarify Google's policy on double serving ads? Or that of Yahoo & Bling come to that.

My understanding being that this was prohibited for various, obvious reasons. However, I've recently become aware of this with a competitor showing up to 7 sites on the same keyphrase and have queried it with both Google & Yahoo. I'm still waiting to see how Yahoo respond but Google pretty much said that they would investigate it, it was indeed prohibited, but the action they would take was confidential between them and the advertiser concerned. Given that this was some months ago and the ads are still showing I'm somewhat confused as to how Google enforce their own policies. If double serving is permitted it would seem only fair that Google should clarify the policy with high spending customers. If I were to assume that I could follow the example of the competitor concerned and then find myself banned (because it does appear to me that this would breach the policy) this could put me out of business.

[AussieWebmaster]

Are they all pointing to the same site? Could it be affiliates? Some MCC accounts are being allowed to run - though 7 seems a little excessive - though to different sites owned by same company

[LittleChips]

No, they're not pointing to the same site, but are promoting the same service/product for the same company at 7 different sites. The response I have had from Google is quite ambiguous in that it places the responsibilty for not breaching their terms on the advertiser but then retains confidentiality between themselves and the offending advertiser. So, in this case, given that the ads are still showing, leaves me wondering exactly what the policy is.

[rodhull]

I have seen this happen before with a similar situation to the one you describe. One company, but using a number of different websites all selling the same products, and with PPC ads for each.

What Google did in that case (and presumably what they do in other cases) was to internally link those campaigns (or possibly display URLs/destination domains), effectively tagging them all as the same domain. This meant that of all the websites only one ad would ever show at a time for a given keyword. The ad that would show would be the one with the highest quality score/bid combination.

[LittleChips]

That is exactly what they said would happen but hasn't.

[deanpowel71]

Yeah that's quite true, it will display only one ad at a time or any coresponding keywords

[Discovery]

The official policy for Google, Bling and Yahoo is that no singular company can run multiple accounts for the same company/product or service using the same keywords.

The reality is that Google, Bling and Yahoo openly allow companies to do this. I have provided example after example to Google. Even showed them the corporate page where the offending company listed the websites that it owned and operated. They have the exact same name, logo and landing pages, only the Domain is slightly different, with a domain-name-here.com, or a .net, .org. Each had their own unique advertising campaign.
I gave them whois records, corporate ownership docs, articles from the BBB, and lawsuits from the AG and FTC all demonstrating this is ONE singular company.

After an investigation Google told me they had come to a final conclusion. (which they could not share the details of). The end result...they did nothing. This company still runs up to 4 ads for the same keyword for the same service from the same company. Yahoo never responded, Bling I don't think they have any customer service reps, just a mother computer that captures all of your support requests. I'm not going to call this company to the carpet again, because hell, if Google has given them the green light, then who can blame them for trying to run the table?

The other area of abuse is the "affiliate" programs. Talk about Sham wow! Ya, I see hundreds of "affiliate" websites using the same web form, same 1-2-3 sign up process and so on. Better, if you research the domain name owner it always goes back to the company sponsoring the affiliate program. Wow, who would have thought that? Create an affiliate program that gives an affiliate a pre-made website that hooks into the sponsor companies system. The "affiliate" then runs the PPC campaigns.
I'm sure now that Google checks out these affiliates to make sure they are not contract employees, nor direct employees for the sponsor company.. right?

It's a money grab boys, wild west, none of the engines care much about what is being advertised or by who, only that they are paying for the clicks.

[deanpowel71]

That's great information. how come you people gets such an imperative information.