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...and the URL that they wanted the bids associated with led to a site that advertised CGI services, but did not really provide any webmaster tips or helpful resources for a webmaster, and did not have a webmaster's forum and had no real guide on their site except for a few hints and such. Could they still bid on those keywords?

OR....

what if someone bid for:

swim wear
bikini girls
toys

and the site that these keywords were bid for was really a Porn site?

How would you handle these 2 instances?

[This message has been edited by Curt.]

Today I dropped in to see what was new. It turns out that webmasters are being scammed by a site called SearchCactus. After laughing to the point of tears, I am going back in my hole.

The site says they provide a resource but really the resource they are providing to other webmasters is their services. They equate their service as a resource.

Then when webmasters go there, they do not find the helpful resources but a resource that they have to pay for.

Same goes for toys. Children may type in toys and will be directed to an adult site that features a different type of toy. That would be bad.

Both bidders feel that those 2 keyword phrases are relevant. I hope that clarifies my question.

But there are still some people living in Colorado mountain communes that are really bent out of shape about anything on the web that isn't free.

If you're a business, do you want people coming to your site and not finding what they want? Is that going to generate more business? or make they angry? All questions to consider.

While this thread is headed this direction I would like to hear both satisfied and unsatisfied clients of the pay-per-click model. In my experience I am aquiring clients who were not satisfied with the traffic and found that the conversion rates dropped with the model. Any experiences are appreciated! I myself struggle with the model because SEO cannot sell or predict clicks. We can put a billboard in Times Square but if that sign isn't a buyable product....

swim wear
bikini girls
toys

and the site that these keywords were bid for was really a Porn site?
----------
I knew a woman that once did a search for infrmation on potty training for girls, and she was extrememly unhappy with her search results.

Each PPC has diferent tools available. Each PPC has some benifit. But you remember the line from 'Animal Farm'? Some are more equal than others. Seems that every week there is a new PPC. Give it a while and you will find that some of them go under, and then expect a round of consolidation as one PPC buys another in order to get the proprietary tools and market share. (Given the current market, that would strikes me a being a good thing.)
As of today, I have not found one singel PPC that has all of the tools I would like. Is there fraud? Yes. Is the customer service great? Not always. Then again, I have never worked for, nor found any company in any field that was nervana.

You can have a direct and positive effect by talking to the people at the PPCs and telling them exactly what your concerns are. I, personally, have gotten 4 PPCs to change their policies and/or add specific bits of programming to better serv me, the customer. It is not in my job description to tell other companies how to run their business, but everyone directly benifits from good, solid, critiques and proposed solutions. I have found the people at the PPCs to be interested in making a better product/service. They don't always do the $50k of programming I want them to do, but they do listen. And sometimes they DO do the $50k of programming you ask for!

Or you can just bitch about it. Your choice.

A casual read of recent posts shows that the PPC world is sinking into an irredeemable bog of corruption. Dubious affiliates are multiplying which the core services cannot or will not control. Pay-to-click schemes are undermining the integrity of the pay-per-click concept. I came in here wondering if there were any other credible services I should consider. After reading the experiences of others, I wouldn't touch any of them with rubber gloves.

I am frankly getting nervous about goto, of which I am a $1k/year customer. About 35% of my goto-related traffic now comes from affiliates, and most appears to be of lower quality than goto, which appears to be of lower quality than other major search engines. My gross revenue is only about $0.25 per visit, and paying goto $0.03-0.04 is not a small deal. It is much better than banner ads, but maybe in the end it is just a slower way to lose money. I am currently working hard on analysis of my server logs to find answers.

Tracking the source of my buyers is alas difficult, because most are returnees (no referring site) or AOL customers. AOL seems to have cached my home page, so I often don't see the first hit at all. I don't cookie until someone starts a shopping cart. So I need to rely on proxy measures of traffic quality more than I would like. Such is life on the web.

How do you keep these things in check? And what about those listings that are attached to keywords that in no way are related to the listing?

A porn site could be listed under "webmaster resources". I've actually seen that before in other engines.

This is an area where Goto shines like Yahoo. Editors preview the sites that are submitted against the keyword bid list.

So, any sites trying to bid on a keyword with unrelated content are declined. Its not a perfect system, but "tiers" above the existing majors.

This is one reason, Goto has grown in popularity. Inktomi listings are about the only area you can view un-related content on Goto...

In effect this could delay anyone's bid on keywords since they have to screen out the irrelevant bids on unrelated terms

Do you find bids on irrelevant terms to be much of a problem or do bidders tend to stay within their boundaries?

Great questions about relevancy! Here's the answers:

We believe that a free and transparent market does the best job in sorting and ranking for relevancy. In addition to the market discipline, our editorial team makes every effort to ensure that advertisers only get search terms which are relevant to their respective sites, both in their review of keywords submitted via our website as well as in the proposals they develop.

This includes adult content. We do not permit adult content websites to bid for vague search terms which may be relevant to both non-adult and adult content sites.

So, to address the specific examples provided by Curt:

Our human editors at GoTo.com would allow "webmasters resource" (Because CGI services are a webmaster resource, and the term "resources" does not necessarily mean free to everyone, as many people pay for resources.); they would also allow "site design guide" (if the site has hints and tips, even if they are few and poor, because we do not judge sites based on quality).

Our humans would not allow "webmasters forum" if there were no bulletin board or chat area or some other method for webmasters to share their interests.

They would also not allow adult sites to bid on: "swim wear," "bikini girls," or "toys."

This is because these terms could pertain to both non-adult and adult content sites, and we don’t believe that people should get sites that they are not looking for. If it's not relevant, we don't want it in our users' search experiences.

And finally, we have no control over the back-end Inktomi results that are served on GoTo.com. The Inktomi results are served when no bids, or not enough bids appear under a search term. These results are subject to the spamming by adult sites. We are working with Inktomi towards a solution to this problem, so that users can select the type of sites that they want but it is not ready for implementation yet. Hopefully soon!

I should note that we handle many sites each day and some inappropriate sites may slip through. We do our best to catch everything, but when we miss something we will fix it when the mistake is realized.

Also, site owners may change their sites after we approve them. But again, as soon as this is called to our attention, we will remedy it. Recognizing that this is a human process, we always welcome input as to the relevancy of our search results.

(By the way, check out the new topic I just created about return on investment (ROI) from GoTo clicks. I'd like to get your feedback.)

--GoTo Guy