We used to use Google Adwords to advertise our business on the responses to Google searches by the public. We stopped using them.
Why did we stop?
- It was not the cost;
- It was not the hit rate;
We stopped because we could not get to talk/online chat with a real person in Google about the problem we encountered. We had the wording of an advertisement rejected without explanation by Google. The advert wording was not offensive, nor so far as we could see did it breach any published Google rules. We were in fact trying to correct an entry generated by Google about our business. We keep getting calls from Joe Soap consumers asking us to fix problems with their home PC's. We don't do that. We build trading floors and data centres and we charge high fees for that specialist skill.
The only "assistance" from Google was an automatic Catch-22 type of response referring us to the Google rules. We'd already checked those and needed to speak to a human being, but that appears to be impossible for Google. A typical response from a money rich global corporation who can afford to lose a percentage of customers through poor communication.
What triggered this blog posting? Google have emailed us an offer of £100 to start advertising with them again. The sender of the email - adwords-noreply@google.com!! Once again automated with no contact with a human being! What a waste.
Alaric
ps. I've just been told Google have sent a new email to our director increasing their offer to £150. To think they could have avoided this if they'd decided to make it possible for us to actually chat to a human being.
ps. I've just been told Google have sent a new email to our director increasing their offer to £150. To think they could have avoided this if they'd decided to make it possible for us to actually chat to a human being.
What's the point with getting discounts if Google is going to rip you off?
ReplyDeleteHere's how they ripped me off: http://chuacw.ath.cx/blogs/chuacw/archive/2011/05/25/google-adwords-ripoff.aspx
Google rips off their advertisers, and the people sponsoring them by putting their ads up.
ReplyDeleteAdSense users are discouraged from having CTR of 10% and lose their accounts with no communication from google when that suddenly happens, being denied proof of it.
AdWords users are encouraged to pay $2 per click for visitors that hardly purchase, and just view things because they seem "interesting".
I think the concept of Adwords is reasonable, but you are always at risk that people with no real interest will click-thru. That is just one of the risks of advertising. Our beef is the poor communication to/from Google. They could easily fix this problem.
ReplyDelete