A Google Adwords Bug That Cost Us
blog.lawnstarter.com
blog.lawnstarter.com
But no one is doing anything, because what can you do — switch another context ad system designed for another search engine? Yeah, right. This is the classical monopoly example, that no one does anything about.
But that's exactly what companies like Amazon and Wal-Mart do every day. For crying out loud, even Comcast (COMCAST!) has better support than Google or Twitter for their paid products.
Also they will correct any mix up almost immediately and will almost always credit you when you ask (or at least throw in another free month of prime).
When Google and Twitter say they can't handle incoming calls or respond with anything other than automated email, what they are really saying is 'fuck you, we have no competition'...which works great until there is competition.
try being a seller on amazon. Customers scam you all the time and you just have to take it. If you decide to fight it, your sales stats go down and an automated bot will ban your account.
when you appeal, there is nobody that will help you. The only support is email, which is a series of automated responses. Nothing more.
and emailing jeff@amazon.com? That hasn't worked in many years.
sellers make amazon a large percentage of their profits, yet they can't even given them any real support. If you look in the main seller forums, there are countless stories of people with long-term businesses getting banned for reasons like this with absolutely no recourse. They are abusing the monopoly they have on the online marketplace.
on top of all of this, amazon gets to keep your customers. They aren't really yours anyway, since you can't send them any company contact info or collect an email address.
They will also only admit this when it can. Ensued to their advantage. If a seller sends you a wrong or broken item, you will have to pay for return shipping. I asked amazon reps about this and they say because i am a customer of a 3rd party selling on amazon, they won't reimburse me.
It's funny how that works......
That, and I've gotten them on the phone for support a few times already, answering random questions I have, pretty satisfactory.
If you can convert a lead profitably then it makes sense to advertise in that channel.
If you spend $400 per lead and you convert 1 out of every 10 leads to a paying customer, then it costs you $4,000 to acquire that customer. If the life time value of the customer is $10,000 with a 50% profit margin ($5,000), then you just profited $1K!
PPC is really a game of arbitrage. Where it gets hazy is calculating correct LTV (considering customer turnover, referrals, etc.) and properly tracking conversions. It's not an exact science but good advertisers can get accurate enough.
For bigger advertisers these costs are insignificant in comparison to the media bill
Small businesses, like doctors, for example, can make a mint with AdWords. If you sell the right kind of product, it works exceedingly well even at tiny scales.
Thinking about it, with Google's push to make you add your business location to maps etc they are really starting to compete with the Yellow Pages which was/is basically 100% small to medium businesses - I guess it's a market where the combined long tail is much bigger than the big players.
I think if you're running TV ads, it's a given that you aren't a small advertiser in the sense that 'coliveira probably meant.
In what way was the support inadequate with regards to this article? It seems to me Google responded pretty quickly and resolved this persons issue.
In my experience, Google support tends to have "the customer is always wrong" mindset.
A couple years ago when I was working for an advertising company that was spending several tens of thousands of dollars per day, we were offered large (hundreds of thousands of dollars) refunds on several occasions, including some where the screw-up was our own fault.
What blows my mind is people that know how bad Google support can be, and they still build their business around Google services (Google Apps for Business, Cloud Computing, Google Wallet, etc). Amazon, Rackspace and many others aren't much more expensive and you get world-class customer service.
But this was a legit bug! Google made a clear mistake. I didn't see it in the post, but did you ever explicitly ask for a refund? If it were me I would certainly be demanding my money back for any clicks associated with the bug.
Note: the nicer you're to customer service agents when you plead your case, the more likely they're to help you out. I'm not suggesting you were mean, just a general tip when trying to get an issue resolved, especially when dealing with big companies.
Location targetting is a little trickier than just setting geotargetting in Adwords. The targetting issues could be Google or could be their account setup. Hard to say without review. Considering there was definitely a bug with the phone number, they should have Google review their account fully.
A couple of years ago, we noticed massive automated click fraud that Google's fraud detection algorithms didn't seem to catch (which was kind of strange since all the clicks came from the same IP). However, after sending over some HTTP logs to Google, they removed all the invalid clicks from our account within a day or so.
I would definitely try to get my money back in your case.
> Edit: Since people keep asking, no my account wasn’t credited.
You have admission of fault. Right there.
Not to say they won't give a refund, but I'm guessing their lawyers have things setup so they aren't obligated to.
We spend quite a bit of money on AdWords every day, and I started managing the account a few weeks ago (hand-off from an agency) and it's been a fantastic challenge to brush up on that part of my skill-set again. However, it's kind of weird that their numbers never really match up with ours, typically overreported, and I pray that we never run into an issue like the one you have had.
On the bright side, at least AdWords numbers are predictably off (about 15% overreported, on average.) Facebook Ads numbers overreport anywhere from 10% to 100%, so that's the one I worry about on a day to day basis.
Seconded; the support people basically did state it was an error on their side, so a full refund sounds obvious. Maybe even a compensation for damages, since you probably lost a lot of potential customers.
Just think if this was your personal money, what would you do? If you just take the hit, the money doesn't mean enough to you.
When I do a search for topics or resources that I come across on here on HN or Reddit or other sources that are extremely valuable and informative and useful, there is almost no chance that you can find those resources simply by doing a google search. That's only a small, anecdotal example, but it indicates a larger issue to me; like the top couple snowflakes that are sitting on top of the tip of the iceberg.
You can apply for a refund here: https://support.google.com/adwords/refund/procedures
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Even in the example given (where the OP could see a wrong telephone number), how could they know how often it had been shown wrongly, and how many people had called? Only Google knows (or could know). You have to trust them, but you cannot verify them.
Even if you come up with your own metrics to monitor Adwords, why would Google believe your numbers over theirs?
"It's just super frustrating because we spend like $300/day!"
How about: "We have been spending $300/day, and an error on Google's part means we are not being provided the service we are paying for. We need to know that this is fixed and then will need to discuss our past spend with someone who can act on crediting our account. Here's how we can replicate the problem."
You aren't their buddy. You are not asking for a "solid." You are a business owner, not some tweener boy that smudged their new white kicks.
"you can also just search it now. it's still screwed up."
Own the facts and deliver them without emotional loading. "Screwed up" is inaccurate and unprofessional - whiney in context with the "super frustrated" quip above.
"You can also just..." leaves room for a different set of facts.
Give a detailed description of the path you took and the results. If the results aren't obviously incorrect, define that issue. Repeat the desired outcome.
And, if you have "a meeting" and can't get the issue resolved, then you should have someone else make the call who can grind it out or schedule abundant time for dealing with this - or maybe $300/day and the previous spend isn't all that much and you should just walk away from AdWords...
You'd be better off penning blog articles that break down perfect grass types and pros/cons of various herbicides for the locality of McLean than crapping investor cash on advertising in the unseen margins of the search results.
Lawn care is definitely a word of mouth and signs in green yard growth business. I'd ask neighbors before trusting anyone who pays for AdWords, because my bill for lawn care pays for those AdWords and a good lawn care company doesn't need ads.
Most every service I've courted that does big ad spends on Google charges more for the same or worse service than other providers.