Google Unlimited Clicks Scam or not?

Google Unlimited Clicks

Google Unlimited Clicks is our flagship service offering which offers unlimited clicks via Google sponsored ads for a fixed cost.  Typically Google text AdWords are Pay-Per-Click (PPC), which means that every time a user clicks on the ad, the sponsor pays per click.  In Google Unlimited Clicks, no matter how many times somebody clicks on the ad, you will always pay a fixed amount for the ad.
As you may already know, Google does not offer any fixed cost adwords.  Based on your keyword, we typically perform our own searches to determine how much maximum and minimum we will have to pay for the given keyword in a given geography.  We then carefully calculate the number of hits expected and engineer a formula for bidding process.  We mostly find that the high value, but frequently used keywords are undervalued during our research – given that  most people decided what keyword they want and typically look for competition and CPC without doing this in-depth research.  We sometimes see prices for less frequently used terms are way overpriced, at the same time, more frequently used search terms are often under priced.  Our research gives us the best spread we can expect when running the AdWord.
We will be launching our plans soon.  You may sign up to get notified.

Unlimited Google Adwords for fixed fee Cold call Marketing

After receiving a number of calls from clients mentioning that they had been approached by a company offering unlimited Google Adword clicks and top position on Google searches for the chosen keywords, we felt compelled to delve a little deeper with comical results.

The Offer From Amstron Technologies

The offer was top sponsored listings on either the premium position at the top of the page or on the right hand side of the Google results. Nothing wrong with that I hear you say and I agree. There are many reputable companies offering to manage your Adwords account for a fixed fee. This wasnt the problem. It was the offer of unlimited clicks for a flat fee of £175 per month that we found hard to believe.

Alarm Bells Start To Ring

They say that when something is too good to be true it usually is. The clients themselves thought it was a little too good to be true and called Webphoria for some advice. After looking through the email they had been sent a number of things caught our attention before we had even called Amstron to go through the proposal.

Heres what we found:

• Graeme Mackintosh claimed to be calling from Google and sought to back this up by emailing the client from a “Google” account. Only it wasnt a Google account – it was a googlemail account. Freely available to anyone to sign up to.
• The company Amstron Technologies had no web presence whatsoever. No sponsored links, no website, no directory listing. NOTHING. The telephone number failed to show up in any searches despite claims of “many years experience” and 100′s of clients already signed up.
• Companies house confirms a company called Amstron Technologies was set up but was now dissolved.
• The keywords he was offering can cost upto £5 per click – they are premium keywords. One simple calculation later and it would only take 35 clicks before the £175 monthly fee would be used up and our listing would start costing Amstron money. How can it work? How does this company make money?

Lets talk to Graeme…

I telephoned Graeme Mackintosh at around 5pm on 11/03/2009 when I got back from the office to go through the proposal with him. For those interested the number was 0870 803 4169 or you can catch him on his mobile on 07837 987493.
Our conversation started off quite cordially as he explained what he was offering to my client. He went through the offering, explained how much it would cost and how many keywords they would optimise the site for. He also explained how our natural listings would also benefit by the increase in paid promotion.
I listened to what he had to say and then asked him how it was possible to offer unlimited clicks for a fixed fee. After mentioning again that it was possible and that his technical team dealt with the specifics of how it worked he continued to give me his sales pitch and how it was all more than possible.
I mentioned again to Graeme that some of the keywords were quite costly and that after a few clicks would start costing Amstron money – he replied that he understood this and it was a risk that the company would absorb. At this point i think he was getting annoyed with me and when i asked to speak to one of the “technical team” he concluded our conversation.

The Aftermath…

This is the email Graeme Mackintosh sent to my client, the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Dear XXXX
Thank you for your interest shown. I received a rather offensive call from your “website guru”, Numan, yesterday evening, questioning our business and how we’re able to offer you the deal that we did.
If he doesn’t have the knowledge how to tie the links together, I don’t think it’s his right to question how we do it and then tell me that it’s not possible.
Unfortunately that offer has now been accepted by one of your rival firms.
I wish you well in your endeavour to appear on Google. In closing may I suggest that it’s not very professional for someone like Numan (who should know what he’s talking about, but obviously doesn’t), to ring up and question our ethics and proposal.
Regards
Graeme Mackintosh
Business Solutions Advisor
Amstron Technologies
Tel: 0870 803 4169
Mob: 07837 987493
Frosty to say the least but I was definately not offensive and if Graeme was offended by my questions then I apologise to him but we still dont have answers to our questions.

It doesnt end there…

Annoyed that Graeme had emailed again to complain about my questions and to inform them of a “Rival” firm taking up the offer my client decided to retaliate in the way only he knows how…
Dear Graeme,
Your emails have been passed to me.
Firstly, DO NOT contact this firm again. You talk about being professional, well you’re approach certainly isn’t.
When I first spoke with XXXX about this, she seemed very interested. I told her that muppets from companies like the one you work for are a dime a dozen and to stay well clear. Judging by your response, you have cemented my initial thought that you are indeed a muppet. I’ll call you kermit from now on, as Graeme certainly won’t be your real name.
So kermit, you claim to be a well versed with google and the rankings system, and consider yourself professional. Why don’t you have a proper email address, instead of a ‘googlemail’ one. That’s the first sign of a con artist for me.
Questionning why our web expert called you is just stupid. You are attempting to con people out of money and get irate when someone calls you to ask what you are doing for the money. Well, that’s another sign of a con artist to me.
You have no web presence, errrmmmm con artist springs to mind again. It’s getting a bit repetetive now isn’t it kermit?
Basically, I have better things to do with my time kermit, but suffice to say that you have shown you true colours. Move onto the next con please.
Mr XXXXX XXXXXXX

Summing Up

There are still a lot of companies offering the unlimited clicks for fixed fee service and i am yet to meet anyone who has signed up to this and gotten what they pay for. If you work for Amstron or if Graeme himself wants to get in touch and explain their offering I would be happy to print a retraction.
If you have ever signed up for an unlimited clicks service and have been happy with what you have received then please get in touch with us – we would love to hear from you.
Update 09/04/10
We had received an email from a concerned user detailing an offer from townpages.co.uk with regards Unlimited Google Clicks. The email they received looked suspicous and they forwarded it to us for our opinion. After posting the email on this page and subsequently speaking to a representative at townpages he told us the following.
- There is no fixed fee for any keywords
- Fees are dependant on the popularity of the keywords and reflected in the price you pay
- They state that Credit card details are not taken and the client can cancel the direct debit at any time but if you view their terms and conditions this is not true.
This is an excerpt from townpages terms and conditions:
“AdWords 90 day trial will automatically continue into a further 12 month contract at the expiry of the 90 day trial (for which the additional payment will be due from you for the additional period of 12 months) unless cancelled in writing by notice to us within the first 60 days of the trial period. Please see terms and conditions for further details. ”
We still dont believe you can offer Unlimited Clicks but obviously they werent going to share their business model with us. The cost for keywords varies depending on the industry and market your operating in. Typcally personal injury, accident claims, cheap flights are amongst the most expensive keywords you can buy (upto £25 per click) and townpages dont offer these words in their unlimited clicks package for obvious reasons.
There are a number of online tools available for you to check the adwords spend of your competitors and using this tool and one of the examples the townpages rep gave me it showed a daily ad spend on between £0.40 and £4.40 for one of their clients. This equates to a maximum monthly charge of around £123. If this figure is accurate and the click through rate remains the same then they would be spending a maximum of £123 on that campaign per month . You can check the tool out yourself at: www.spyfu.com/uk/

UPDATE – 16/11/09:
Lavora Marketing are another company that have been accused of using this sales technique. A search for Lavora Marketing brings up a number of posting and websites dedicated to Lavora and their sales technique. If you come across any more companies claiming to be from Google, have an aggressive sales technique, dont deliver on their promises or are offering unlimited google clicks for a fixed fee please get in touch with us.

UPDATE – 23/11/09:

We had a telephone call from Michael at Lavora Marketing today to object to the comments on our website. Michael has stated that they DONT offer unlimited Google clicks for a fixed fee unlike the guys at Amstron. What they offer is sponsored google advert for 5 keywords in exchange for a fixed monthly fee. Of this fixed fee Mike told me that from this fixed monthly fee they charge a 30% management fee for the management of the campaign. Webphoria have a client currenly signed up with Lavora and they were able to tell me their experiences of Lavoras offering:

- They did not promise her Unlimited Clicks
- Although the advert appeared when they said it would it dissapeared shortly after
- She has had to chase them up on a number of occassions to ask where her advert was – it then subsequently re-appeared
- There was a lot of keyword duplication with her natural listings (i.e. she was paying for keywords she already ranks page 1 for)
- The adverts were generic and not tailored to the keyword typed and hence in our opinion not very well optimised
Mike was very honest in the bad press they have received and owned up to some past mistakes but claimed that they are very transparent in their offering and that all clients receive documentation detailing what they get for their money. He also mentioned that most of the postings were from a number of years ago but our research has seen comments as late as October 2009.
In our opinion 30% for managing an adwords campaign is a little steep for what is essentially a 5 minute job. Anyone can create an Adwords campaign within minutes and get their site to the top of Google. Our advice is to try it yourself first and if its too difficult look for a reputable agency to manage your PPC campaign. Most companies charge between 10 and 15% of total spend to manage an Adwords campaign for you.

3 reasons to consider Bing ads instead of Google AdWords

How do you find something on the Internet? You Google it.

The fact that Google’s brand name has become interchangeable with the word “search” in the context of the Web is a big problem for Microsoft Corp. It launched Bing in 2009, with hopes the name would elicit association with finding the right answer (like buzzing in on a game show). Today Google search still dominates the Canadian market, with 67 per cent market share according to comScore Inc. Bing has improved Microsoft’s market share since replacing its Live Search brand, but still doesn’t claim even half of what Google delivers.

So when deciding where to advertise online, it seems like Google is the obvious choice for marketers. It has a larger audience, so it can deliver more clicks to a given keyword campaign, right? Well not in every situation, it turns out. Plus, there are certain circumstances where Bing Ads can cost less than Google’s AdWords and still get you the same results.

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Microsoft has been working to improve the Bing advertising experience. Microsoft says it seen a 25 percent increase in click volume to Bing Ads globally in the past year. It’s also been investing in advertising the platform on TV and online, challenging users to compare it to Google’s results in a blind test.

But is it really worth spending your search engine marketing dollars? We asked Scott Wilson, CEO of RankHigher.ca if there were any advantages. RankHigher.ca has certified 14 of its staff to be Bing Ads Accredited, more than any other Bing partner. It’s no secret that he likes Bing, and he gives some examples of where advertisers can get more bang for their buck using Bing Ads instead of Google AdWords.

You’ll pay less for the same keywords
First of all, if you already have a Google AdWords campaign running then you can migrate it to Bing with a simple import tool that’s offered. In the past, the process to set up a campaign was overly complicated, but Wilson says those days are gone.
“The labour cost to get a Bing campaign up and going is less than one hour,” he says.
Because there are also fewer businesses advertising on Bing right now, you may get a lower price point on the keywords you’re targeting. Just like on AdWords, Bing Ads awards the display of an advertisement based on which advertiser is willing to pay the most for the keywords at the specific time a user conducts a search. Advertisers are competing to buy keywords by bidding against each other.
“If less people show up at an auction, then things get sold off at a lower price,” Wilson says. “The cost per click is significantly less.”
The other upside of fewer advertisers is there will be less competitors showing up alongside your ad on the results page. That means a higher chance of seeing a click-through by a searcher.

All E-Solutions Spotlights | Bing Ads Accredited? Get Updated Badges And Certificates

You may have noticed, Microsoft rolled out new branding for Bing and Bing Ads over the past month. Now, that new look has carried over to the Bing Ads Accredited Professional program.
Updated certificates and badges are available for use on your website and other marketing materials.
To access the newest certificate, click on “Congratulations! You’re a Bing Ads Accredited Professional” link at the top of your dashboard in Bing Ads. Updated badges are available by clicking on the “Accredited Professional Badge” section at the bottom of My Dashboard.

Study Finds Small Businesses Waste 25 Percent Of Their PPC Budgets

While pay-per-click marketing has become an integral part of many small businesses’ marketing plans, most SMBs struggle to find the time and resources to manage their PPC campaigns. A new study finds that, due to managerial and strategic errors, SMBs inadvertently waste a quarter of their paid search budgets.

Paid search software firm, WordStream, conducted the study by reviewing the accounts of 500 small and mid-sized business clients who manage their own AdWords accounts. WordStream found that less than half of the businesses have conversion tracking installed on their landing pages. A large portion the accounts are running campaigns to generate leads or phone inquiries, yet 95 percent of the accounts don’t have call extensions set up.

According to WordStream, the 25 percent spend inefficiency is primarily the result of SMBs not actively managing their paid search campaigns. WordStream quantified the impact of limited campaign management in several of the client industries represented: 126 lost insurance quotes;  367 lost bed and breakfast inquiries; 569 lost product sales for retailers; 157 lost B2B supplier leads.
I asked Larry Kim, WordStream founder and CTO, for his thoughts on the particular challenges SMBs face in PPC and how they can get more active in managing their campaigns.
GM Why do you think it’s hard for SMBs to manage their paid search accounts — too confusing; hard to know where to focus; it’s “that thing” that runs on auto-pilot and does more than if it weren’t running at all? 

LK Small business owners struggle with a general lack of time at baseline, and keeping up with all of the changes in AdWords is practically a full time job. Furthermore, they lack context – even if they understand the basic features and functions in AdWords, it’s hard for them to know if their ad performance is any good or not, and thus not be aware, for example, how much better they could be doing.
GM What do SMBs need to be thinking about when budgeting for PPC campaigns?

LK  The two most common ways SMBs think about PPC budgets are:

a)  Cost per lead relative to other channels: This assumes a fixed marketing budget and the goal is simply to get the most for the available marketing budget. In which case, the business can spend more and more on PPC up until the point it costs less than or equal to the cost of generating leads through other channels (eg: Groupon, Yellow Pages, etc.)

b) Cost per lead relative to average value per lead: This involves doing some research and figuring out how many leads on average it takes to generate a sale, then figuring the value of an average sale and what you’re able to pay for a lead. You then try to get as many leads as you can for less than or equal to the target cost per lead.

Most SMBs we talk to are limited by budget – they’re spending just over $1k per month on average, and given that Google serves billions of searches a day, there are usually many more queries and clicks out there than they can afford. So usually, I find that SMBs should try to be as picky as possible (bid on very specific keywords, use negative keywords, etc.) and only pay for “VIP keywords” – keywords that are strategically important to the business.

GM When SMBs are really struggling and need to refocus, it can be hard to know where to prioritize their efforts. Where should they start?

LK Generally there’s an 80/20 rule in which one or two campaigns amount for the lion’s share of clicks and conversions. I’d follow the money, and direct the top five optimization efforts we outline  on the top ad, or top campaign in the account, then work your way down. Set up a workflow wherein you spend a few minutes every week or two analyzing and optimizing your campaigns. Slow and steady wins the race — the reality is the bar is quite low — most small business PPC accounts aren’t that great, and a little bit of insight and effort can go a long way.

WordStream suggests businesses start by allocating even a small amount of time a week in campaign management, which should include: identifying the best (typically long-tail) keywords for your business and make good use of keyword match types and negative keywords; writing and testing relevant ad copy to achieve lower cost-per-click and lower cost-per-action; test and optimize PPC-specific landing pages (with conversion tracking installed); set up mobile preferred ads and be sure call extensions are set up to capture active inquiries.

What should small companies use Microsoft Bing ad or Google Adwords?

Data released yesterday by small business (SMB) marketing platform Pricing Engine argues, as a number of others have in the past, that Bing ads are a “more efficient” buy than Google AdWords. While Google has more search volume and higher CTRs, Bing emerges as a lower cost source of leads for SMBs according to the company’s analysis.
(See also, AdGooroo’s comparison of Google AdWords vs. Yahoo-Bing ad performance in six verticals.)
Pricing Engine looked at its own data from hundreds of small business accounts. It found that CTRs were marginally higher on Google but CPCs were much higher.

Source: Pricing Engine small business accounts analysis
Accordingly, the SMB spend was determined by Pricing Engine to be “more efficient” on Bing. While big brands may favor the higher query volume on Google, SMBs don’t demand or frankly need the same kind of scale. Indeed, in some cases, significant scale can create fulfillment problems for SMBs.
The following chart shows the average monthly AdWords spend by business category among Pricing Engine’s SMB clients:

Source: Pricing Engine small business accounts analysis
This next graphic below reflects a comparison between the average CTR and CPC (for Pricing Engine clients) by business category for Google AdWords.

Attorney services saw the most expensive clicks and the largest gap between CTR and CPC. Automotive by contrast was almost perfectly balanced.

How is Bing Ads different from Google Adwords?

If you're already a Google user, you'll find that you're already familiar the PPC campaign structure used in Bing Ads, as well as many of the key features and tools used to create and manage your PPC campaign. In fact, you can easily import much of your Google campaign directly into Bing Ads (for directions on how to do this, take a look at How to import a campaign from AdWords or other programs).

Whether you choose to import your campaigns or create them from scratch, there are a few differences between Bing Ads and Google that you should know about. Here's a short list of things to be aware of as you get started.