Why is GoToMeeting being a scumbag? | Hacker News Reader

Why is GoToMeeting being a scumbag?

bradmccarty.me

68 pointsaresant27 comments

There's actually a few tactics being used here that's very common in search engine marketing (SEM) that's not necessarily intentional (at least the ad copy part):

- They are targeting "meeting burner" and variations as part of standard expansion strategies. In fact, some of this could have been suggested by Google through Keyword Suggestions. Has meetingburner filed a trademark protection request with Google to prevent competitors from using their name in their ad copy? Google actually doesn't protect your keyword from being a "trigger" to show ads since they claim that the user intent is to search for "meeting software" and both companies have relevance to that query. Usually, if it's your brand name, you should have an exceedingly high Quality Scores which translates to your competitors paying extremely high CPCs to even show up against your brand. Try using "meetingburner - Official Site" to let people know the other ad is not meetingburner.

- The ad copy appears to be using dynamic keyword insertion so it's using keywords being targeted to build the ads so it's something like "{KeyWord} Software" and it could be "Meeting Burner Software" or "Online Meeting Software" depending on the keyword being used but the ad copy can be universally used and not specifically targeted at meetingburner. Filing a trademark protection request with Google will automatically flag/disable competitor ads that can trigger against your trademarked terms.

I've been using MeetingBurner for about 3 months now, and it's not just the price (free) that won me over, it's the ease of use for participants compared to the other services.

When you're dealing with clients, a bad web meeting experience can damage your reputation, even though you had nothing to do with why it was bad.

I use Screenleap.com when I need to show things quickly, and MeetingBurner when I'm doing a more formal meeting and need both a conference line and a traditional screencast.

There are only two UX issues I have with MeetingBurner, and that's the need to download an "app" each time I present (which I can deal with), and the fact that the conference line doesn't beep when new people join the call (which really needs to change ASAP).

You should check AnyMeeting. The feature set for a free account doesn't come close in comparison with what you have suggested above.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think these meeting services are one of those businesses which are apparently raking dough off of Ads via general public adoption. These are no longer just a business services.

Probably because they use an automated tool for generating ads, saw this was a "related keyword" and stuffed the search query into the opening line of the ad so it would appear more relevant.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor

There was a pretty good explanation of how this process works: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4086887

It seems they would have had to purposely put "MeetingBurner" as one of the keywords to be stuffed into the ad. If they truly are just that stupid then it speaks as much about them than if they were being malicious. o_0 It sure does look shady to me.

Not necessarily. You can do wildcards in text ads where the matching term gets inserted. Not saying that's what they did, but it definitely doesn't have to be done by hand.

When you put the wildcards (DKI), it matches the keyword from your list of keywords, not the search query. So you'd have to put MeetingBurner on a list of keywords to have it show up here (which as others said, could be due to the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool)

"Ignorance is no excuse" - I don't need a wiki article to demonstrate this

This came up just a few days ago on HN [1]. The conclusion there, based on a response from GoToMeeting's marketing department, was that they were using Google's dynamic keyword insertion to replace words in the ad copy with the user's search terms [2], and at the same time, bidding on their competitor's name. So, if you'd entered "online meeting", it would've come up with "Online Meeting Software" in the GoToMeeting ad; the technique seems to have backfired in this case.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4086757

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4086860

It is always possible their adwords sales person suggested it. Ever since Google prevailed in their advertising against trademarks suit [1] where they aren't responsible for folks who buy ads against someone else's trade or service mark I see more of it (well when I use Google anyway, which is hardly ever :-)

I expect that some sociopath at GotoMeeting has the 'win' bit set to "we get more referrals from Google" and they haven't had a penalty created for being underhanded (or as they would no doubt say, competitive). Bid more for your own name and you won't get ads on top of you. Google wins, you lose. Sorry about that.

[1] http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2012/01/keyword_adverti... - and many links at the end.

That would be my take too, some idiot sales guy thought it would be a good idea. I'm pretty sure that does not come from management.

Obviously that goes against google ads rules and you don't want your company ban from there if you are legit (gotomeeting seems to be)

Here is my point of view as a Search Engine Marketer:

- Go to meeting is probably using Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) in their ads. This dynamically inserts a user's search query into the ad copy. From looking at the blog post, this seems to be true for the second screenshot. For the 1st screenshot, it seems that they are indeed building copy with "Meeting Burner" on it.

Whether this was suggested by they in-house Adwords person, an agency or anyone else, this is plain wrong. Not sure if you have any relationship with anyone from the Google Adwords team, but if you do, it would be good to get in touch with them.

Also, here is more info regarding this: https://www.en.adwords-community.com/t5/Ad-Approvals-and-Adv...

Here is the Google Adwords Trademark Complaint Form: https://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmcomplaint

If you guys need some help with your Adwords campaigns feel free to shoot me an email (HN_user_name@gmail.com). I'd be more than happy to volunteer couple hours to optimize your account or help you with sitelinks or retargetting.

As someone who does SEM, I played around with some queries, and...

-GTM is using the dynamic keyword insertion for the title of some their ads. This is not uncommon. And for the right queries, it does work.

-GTM is buying keywords for some competitors, for example, search fuzebox. On the other hand, they haven't found join.me just yet.

As an advertiser, unless there is a trademark block, you can bid on competitor keywords. What you can't do is use competitor keywords in the title or copy of your ad, dynamic insertion and/or copy. That second screenshot is most troubling, as the title does not match the query (i.e. that copy was built.)

GTM needs to remove their dynamic insertion ad from their competitor ad group and from any built copy. They should not be using competitor keywords in the title/copy of their ads at all, so for any budding SEMs here that's really what the issue is.

> That second screenshot is most troubling, as the title does not match the query (i.e. that copy was built.)

Did you mean to say that the first screenshot was more troubling? That is the one where the user searched "meetingburner" and the ad copy says "Meeting Burner Software | GoToMeeting.com"

When I see an ad like this I always click through to make sure the offending company has to pay.

And by clicking back immediately you lower their quality score so they have to bid more for the same terms.

I do the same thing, even though I know that in reality it's not making any significant difference.

While this (click-through) tactics may have some cost implication, I doubt that (even as a community) we could make a dent in the marketing budget.

In general, we severely underestimate how companies waste budget without blinking an eye.

we faced this we were running dimdim. even now this is what the ads GTM runs for keyword "dimdim" looks like : http://static.inky.ws/image/2152/image.jpg

Just ignore it and build a better product.

I just did the search, and the MeetingBurner name does NOT appear in GoToMeeting's ad copy anymore.

Maybe I am just being too cynical, but is there any way to prove that this actually happened, rather than being a viral marketing stunt by MeetingBurner?

Yeah. I took the top screenshot.

Your blog really gives no direct info about who you are (I now see that things would have been clarified if I had clicked through to your twitter account), making it hard to tell whether you are truly independent or a marketing person for MeetingBurner. Credibility really wasn't helped by your blog post being submitted by a MeetingBurner founder (according to his/her HN profile).

Anyway, I've verified the screen shot for this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4096538 showing somewhat similar behavior by GoToMeeting toward Dim Dim, so it does seem that this story is legit.

Fair enough, but yeah, there are a few clues as to who I am and the Svbtle network is becoming pretty well known at a quick pace.

I suppose that I could update my blurb in the sidebar to better explain, but generally speaking anyone who's reading that site is someone who knows me anyway. Getting linked on HN is fringe case for me.

There are also folks who do what is known as affiliate marketing that may be behind this. GoToMeeting may not have actually placed the ad, however an affiliate marketer (3rd party) may have placed the ad in hopes to get click through dollars.

free for 15 people meeting, that's like 95% of the market, and I wonder if they can sustain the business model?

when we use this kind of online conference tools, any concern on internal IP(say, it's recorded without your knowledge)? I would like to buy similar software to host my own conferences instead, though I don't think anyone is doing that.

A fair question.

Without giving too much away, the uptake rate to Pro & Premium has turned MB into a solid, profitable business less than a year after launch.

If tweaks occur to the "Free" account down the road, the MB team has historically "grandfathered" all account levels retroactively if changes are made moving forward.

still in favor of a self-hosted solution and don't mind to pay for that, with that you can compete against the legacy video conference guys, e.g. cisco, polycom(where you set up your private system with their offering, though you now use PC to replace the hardware part).

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