Armand revealed that another client had a sales letter leading to a Clickbank order form get banned.

In both cases the Google Adwords terms being violated was supposedly using a bridge page.

This is crazy stuff, and you can join the 170+ commenters in expressing your outrage.

I will come back to this momentarily.

Google Adwords Elite

The Google Adwords team seem to practice the 80:20 rule, favoring their big advertisers (and themselves).

Adage today for instance has had some advertising data leaked to them by someone.

Lets grab some yummy data to play with:-

June 2010 Adwords Spending

Adage also state:-

While the search-spending document obtained by Advertising Age is not a complete list of advertisers on Google, the accuracy of its data was verified by multiple sources with direct knowledge of spending levels.

Adage’s story concentrates on BP Advertising so I am not going to touch on that at all

Top 10 in document accounted for 5% of US Revenue for the month

Also:-

47 advertisers > $1M
71 advertisers $0.5M to $1M
357 advertisers $0.100M to $0.500M

These are all direct bill not self serve advertisers
Google Total global annual revenue $23000M ($23B)

Lets Do Some Math

I am going to assume totally flat distribution to make my rudimentary inadequate accounting skills look good.

Top10 Total = $44.63M
37 Advertisers also do $1M+ thus 37 * 1.5 = $55.5M
71 advertisers 0.5 to $1M thus 71 * 0.75 = $53.25M
357 Advertisers $0.100M to $0.500M thus 357 * $0.200 = $71.4M
(ok I cheated on that one to flatten the long tail a little $0.3M would be the mid-point)

475 Advertisers spent $224.78M

June would be a fairly quiet month compared to the run up to Christmas, but with total revenues of $23B globally, and allowing for the statement by Adage that this list is not comprehensive, I think it would be fair to assume that the long tail of Google’s total revenue is worth more to them than 20% of total revenue.

You could imagine if 80% of Google’s revenue came from just 100 advertisers that the long tail customers would be less important, but it could well be that 40-50% of revenue from search advertising comes from smaller advertisers – though a lot of those would be managed by agencies.

Back To Armand & Secret PPC

Secret PPC is a training course for Google Adwords Display Advertising teaching how to get clicks that convert into sales for as little as $0.01
I have seen and even paid for similar courses from other marketers (such as one from Alex Goad) thus just by watching the intro video from Armand I can tell that the training is probably a viable method, 100% sustainable and isn’t breaking Google’s Adwords terms of service.

This was being promoted with a launch price back in January 2010 – I don’t know whether the complaint was from that period, or from ongoing promotion at the higher price.

The affiliate sending traffic to Armand’s site would be using a link such as this one

http://www.SecretPPC.com/x.php?af=428465

Here is a clean link http://www.SecretPPC.com/ but you can’t test the redirects yourself with that one.

That is a real affiliate link, I signed up to Armand’s affiliate program years ago and as often happens never promoted anything, but I still have 5 years worth of emails in my archives. Also as I mentioned in my comments on Armand’s post I have seen him speak, I also spent a fortunate 30 minutes with him as a “fly on the wall” in London at a conference with him discussing presentation closing strategies with another notable speaker – I learnt a lot in 30 mins.

That link redirects through another one of Armand’s websites, generatorsoftware.com which is Armand’s central shopping cart and affiliate management system.

http://www.secretppc.com/x.php?af=428465

GET /x.php?af=428465 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.secretppc.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: UTF-8,*
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:11:40 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.7a mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.2.9
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.9
Location: http://generatorsoftware.com/pro/go.php?428465/147
Content-Length: 0
Keep-Alive: timeout=1, max=150
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html
----------------------------------------------------------

http://generatorsoftware.com/pro/go.php?428465/147

GET /pro/go.php?428465/147 HTTP/1.1
Host: generatorsoftware.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: UTF-8,*
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:11:43 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.42 (Unix) PHP/4.4.9 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.14
Location: http://www.generatorsoftware.com/pro/track.php?username=gs&affiliateid=428465&trackingid=&productid=147&trackingid=&test=
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html
----------------------------------------------------------

http://www.generatorsoftware.com/pro/track.php?username=gs&affiliateid=428465&trackingid=&productid=147&trackingid=&test=

GET /pro/track.php?username=gs&affiliateid=428465&trackingid=&productid=147&trackingid=&test= HTTP/1.1
Host: www.generatorsoftware.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.8) Gecko/20100722 Firefox/3.6.8
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: UTF-8,*
Keep-Alive: 115
Connection: keep-alive

HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:11:44 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.42 (Unix) PHP/4.4.9 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
P3P: CP="CAO PSA OUR"
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.14
Set-Cookie: gs_tracking_cookie=0-428465; expires=Tue, 06-Sep-2011 08:11:44 GMT; path=/
Location: http://www.secretppc.com
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html

Thus there is a specific chain

Affiliate Link >> GeneratorSoftware.com >> SecretPPC.com

Then the Google Adwords rep is saying a link from SecretPPC.com to GeneneratorSoftware.com as the shopping cart makes SecretPPC.com a bridge page.

There is even another specific connection between the sites within the legal links at the bottom of the page.

Bridge Pages

There are lots of people being pulled up for this… all those small business owners who want to sell something instead of giving away the farm.

This is what Google state

Relevant and Original Content

Relevance and originality are two characteristics that define high-quality site content. Here are some pointers on creating content that meets these standards:

Relevance:

• Users should be able to easily find what your ad promises.
• Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful information about the product or service in your ad. For instance, direct users to the page where they can buy the advertised product, rather than to a page on your site with a description of several products.

Originality:

• Feature unique content that can’t be found on another site. This guideline is particularly applicable to resellers whose site is identical or highly similar to another reseller’s or the parent company’s site, and to affiliates that use the following types of pages:
  • Bridge pages: Pages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company
  • Mirror pages: Pages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site; your site should not mirror (be similar or nearly identical in appearance to) your parent company’s or any other advertiser’s site
• Provide substantial information. If your ad links to a page consisting mostly of ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), it must also provide additional, unique content.

It’s especially important to feature original content because AdWords won’t show multiple ads directing to identical or similar landing pages at the same time. Learn more about this policy.

That seems simple in practice, but I love this quote Curt Snow paraphrases

According to Google, you need to give John lots of relevant information about blue shoes. You need to tell John all about the history of blue shoes. You also need to do some market comparisons of different brands of blue shoes. And, while you’re at it, you might as well tell him how to lace up and tie those blue shoes. Then, and only then, will Google begin to think that you’re giving their precious users a good experience.

Here’s how Google defined it to me on the phone and in an email.

A user should want to visit your site even if they are not buying something. If a user visits your site and you give them something of value, such as information, then the user will be happy and Google says that this is a good user experience.

Note: That article from Curt is almost 2 years, so some of these issues are not in any way new.

But in the past these rules were typically directed and thought to be intended for “thin affiliate” sites that purely existed to drive traffic to a vendor’s sales letter.

Google is attacking otherwise legitimate vendors now

What is new is this interpretation that a vendor’s own sales page can be looked on as a bridge page to their own shopping cart on another domain.

You Are Not Safe With A 3rd Party Solution Either

Armand has a private affiliate management system, but one of the cases he highlighted was someone selling a cat product through Clickbank, and my friend Lee Duncan recently received a warning maybe related to this… but possibly more because of a lightbox/thickbox style popup.

The problem is that Google are frequently ambiguous in their notifications – small business owners are constantly looking to improve their conversion rates, and rules are constantly being applied differently to them compared to larger competitors.

Data Collection

Google have this fun rule about data collection – they don’t want advertisers sending traffic to squeeze pages. That is why in many cases someone might use a blog, but also use some kind of DHTML popup.

Ian Brodie came up with a cracker of a comment on Armand’s post which I just have to highlight here.

Re: Google’s prohibition of “Data collection sites that imply delivery of free items, etc., in order to collect private information”

When I google “local customers” I get an ad for this thing called Google Places.

It offers me a free local listing in exchange for me giving my private imformation (email address, etc.) to create an account.

So I take it google are going to ban themselves?

Ian

Lets look at that in detail:-

Lets pretend to be Google Adwords Reps

• That is a bridge page driving traffic to Youtube
• That is a bridge page driving traffic to Blogspot
• There is a link to a really unfriendly for browsers PDF file for the testimonials link
• It seems the primary intent of the page is for data collection, not providing information
• No postal address or phone number

Google obviously should be driving paid traffic to their content on Blogspot or Youtube directly, not to a landing page possibly in breach of their own rules.

The criticism is a little tongue in cheek – of course we trust a major brand like Google thus they can have different rules to the rest of us, and of course it is their rules, so they can interpret them any way they want to.

Solution

• Drive traffic to a content site
• Prepackage the content over a number of pages
• Use Google Checkout

Maybe with Google their interpretation of a “bridge page” is more to do with the amount of free content spread over multiple pages than the link to a 3rd party shopping cart.
If that is the case, they need to get a lot more specific with their guideance to Adwords advertisers.

Not what they say in emails or on the telephone, but print in public for everyone to read.

This has a major effect on driving traffic to any product launches certainly in the Internet Marketing space where you might have a series of content made available to visitors for the “launch event”.

Google are killing the concept of sales funnels

Ultimately I need to get back to my headline for this story…

I think these are the issues

• Lack of clear communication from Google
• Different rules for different players
• Different penalties for different players

I actually have my own stake in this as well..

I sent a very reasonable question to Google Adwords a couple of months ago regarding remarketing, and I immediately received a reply that my account had been compromised and limited.
It took me a week to get my account reinstated, but that killed momentum for me, and they still haven’t come back to me with a reply to the questions I asked.

Whilst I should really chase Google for an answer to my questions, to be honest I am scared to death of recommending anyone does anything even slightly adventurous with Google Adwords and actually pay me for the training and tools I might provide.
When someone is paying you for information there is a threshold you cross of additional trust – they are paying for expertise.

If someone pays you money and you get your account with Google Adwords switched off there is a certain additional level of responsibility/liability.

Some of the strategies would certainly have problems with Google’s bridge page interpretation, because they have an effect on the way you can present a sequence of “content events” within a sales funnel, and severely limit what can be achieved by a smaller business owner compared to bigger rivals.

via Techmeme

Update

I have been digging into some more coverage of Armand’s video.

Ryan apparently was sent a final warning by Adwords – he has tons of content on his site an apparently all that content was available navigating from the page.
The final warning apparently was the first warning he ever received.

In the comments there is a comment from Shawn Lebrun who apparently had a similar warning last week, the first warning being a final warning – his lifetime Adwords spend he say is over $1M

I’ve spent over a million dollars with google up to this point. I’ve always used straight forward, direct response techniques with all my sites I’ve run on adwords.
I got the same “final warning” email last week… and they canceled the account the next day without any other warning and without telling me ANYTHING about what I did wrong.
It was a crippling issue, since almost all of my business is from referrals… but clients of mine that had this happen to them… their businesses have been greatly effected.

Whilst he employs 80 people, he also has a team of 200+ website creation, content development, link building and social media specialists to call upon (native English speakers).

If you can avoid doing all the work yourself, either with automation or outsourcing it is more scalable.

Keyword Titan

Just over a week ago, Todd Hogan the founder of Keyword Titan approached me to see if I would be interested in taking a look at their new Keyword research automation tools.

Trust me, I have spent thousands on various keyword research tools in the past, some of them even still get updated by the authors despite changes in the way data can be pulled from the search engines, many of the services are still in business and even booming, and in many ways I am quite happy with what I already have available.

That being said, time is one of my most valuable commodities (though I tend to not use the resource to it’s full potential)

Another problem is grouping

It is fairly easy to group keywords if you are generating them from various root keywords.

{specialty} {profession} {location}

Annulment Attorney in Los Angeles

It is far harder, or at least more time consuming on researched keyword lists.

Keyword Titan Ultimate Challenge

I was already starting to prepare a monetization list to offer as an opt-in bonus, as a companion to Howie’s 36 Niche report. I knew he was covering keyword research in his training, along with monetization, but I wanted to help accelerate the success of anyone taking part in his competition, and continuing that into the future.

If you help people achieve results, good things happen.

The amount of time involved to research 36 niches, highlight 100s of core topics to focus on, and drill down into traffic data, grouping etc using conventional tools would have been astronomic.

2 hours per niche wouldn’t be unreasonable for a shoddy job x 36 niches = 72 hours

2 weeks work, maybe one if you are a machine

It would be less if all you were doing is generating the keywords using some kind of spinning technique, but you would still have to identify the root keyword lists, and then think about negative keywords, grouping etc.

So I challenged Todd to create me 36 keyword lists that I could give away, highlighting the best opportunities for competition and traffic, suitable for both SEO techniques and PPC.

Due to timezones, national holidays in the US, long weekends and various discussions on objectives etc, from start to finish it has taken 8 days to prepare these lists.

I asked Todd how much time it took to prepare all 36 keyword lists.

I couldn’t even contemplate that with any of the tools I own, or have seen. The closest were products like Keyword Bible, but on a broad topic such as Howie provided an initial cross referenced search would have been grinding away on my PC for 30 minutes or more, without any thought to whether the keywords were
actually useful, grouping etc.

These days such poorly defined keyword lists for Google PPC would be a liability.

36 “Opportunity” Keyword Lists Free

What we have prepared are what I would term “core opportunity” keyword sets, the kind ideal for small niche sites, social media promotion tactics etc.

These lists were prepared in exactly the same way as the demonstration video on the Keyword Titan website.

Each list is approximately 150 keywords highlighting the cream for traffic and commercial intent.

1 Complete List for Acne Niche

One complete keyword list for Acne, a $15 value yours free

Acne Keyword Research list is provided free of charge on http://nicheexposed.com

You can also get another free list covering the auto industry just for signing up for a free Keyword Titan account

Full Lists For Other Niche’s

Keyword Titan has 2 primary monetization models

The first is a monthly subscription which is ideal for power users. During discussions with Todd I discovered that their primary target market is specialist SEO & PPC agencies working with lots of clients, or large corporate account holder, not smaller internet marketers.

I believe however there is a huge untapped market (for Todd) within the internet marketing field, especially power users leveraging outsourcing or mass site generation.

From a single complete list, or even from the condensed lists we are providing for free, it would be easy to create 50 or more websites, or a few larger authority sites.

Thus for many a subscription would be overkill, and they should concentrate on owning one niche at a time.

The second monetization model is pre-built and custom lists purchased individually. The pre-built lists are a very affordable $15, and $30 for a custom list based on your own selection of primary keywords.

I believe all of the pre-built lists are available free to people who purchase a monthly subscription.

The 36 Niches Are Now Available as Pre-built lists

Other niches are also available as prebuilt lists

All the sample lists are now available for immediate access, including the complete keyword research list for Acne.

Get them here (Free)

Http://nicheexposed.com

Who is Keyword Titan ideal for?

• SEO & PPC agencies (time is money)

• Large corporate SEO & PPC managers – potentially less specialized skills and less time to manage 1000s of keywords

• Mega sites dealing with multiple verticals

• Mass automation niche marketers who would like some of what they throw against the wall to actually stick

• Niche Marketers looking to dominate single vertical markets (the single reports)

• Anyone who values their time

I haven’t played with the interface extensively, but the results speak for themselves.

Thanks to Todd for offering to help with these keyword lists

Last July SpeedPPC launched to huge critical acclaim and they even created this cool demonstration video of how it works.

There is a higher quality version of this on the SpeedPPC site

I know many of my readers spend 1000s on custom solutions for PPC management. SpeedPPC isn’t a tracking solution.

What it does is build highly optimized landing pages which can enhance your keyword level tracking.

I am sure some people already have custom solutions to do this as well, but not everyone can afford to pay a bunch of programmers to develop proprietary systems, plus you still have the problem of teaching a programmer what you are trying to achieve.

SpeedPPC is a battle tested system

One big caveat as I know this will affect a number of my readers. SpeedPPC uses .Net, thus is Windows only

I love mentioning products being launched by readers. In this case I have been reading Allan Gardyne’s newsletter for 3 years, and Jay Stockwell I know is one of those lurking readers.

I know one thing for sure – if I ever decide to drive traffic to this blog using PPC, it will be to specially designed and optimized landing pages. With the right offer it is possible to exponentially increase opt-in rates.

I suppose my reluctance to use Yahoo was 2 fold

• I am like a dog, quite loyal to the person that feeds me – Google have Adsense, Yahoo for anyone outside the US have nothing to offer.
• I am sure there are a million coupons for Yahoo Search, but in the old days whenever I searched, they all applied to US businesses only – do you give money to a company who treats you as a second class citizen of the world?

Anyway, for those that use them, have a read.

So do you think this will make a difference?
Are you scared to go to sleep tonight?
Did you switch off all your campaigns just in case there is a bug?

P.S. It is actually worth linking to the Yahoo Blog ;)

Vlad was one of the people who decided to do some experimentation with the method, and at the same time also decided to give submitting paid press releases a try.

He had some success in the past, but you know how things go – new ideas for promotion come along, and PPC advertising doesn’t require the same kind of time investment up front.

Today Vlad has written about the results he has achieved using press releases to promote a site.