If you have any from "searchfuel.com" you will know what I am talking about. HIGHLY SUSPECT and costing Goto.com customers money.

[begin letter]

I am getting increasingly concerned about Goto.com customers being duped by sites who are generating traffic just to get the Goto.com payouts.

What else am I supposed to think when I scrutinize a search result from a company called Searchfuel - http://www.searchfuel.com - that says "Results powered by Gohip" (another suspect referrer) which in turn shows
Goto.com results.

What are these jokers up to? I am having to pare back my bids on search terms which unimaginative cheating minds are likely to type in - "first thing that comes to mind" keyword phrases such as "search the web" and "search engines" - because I have little confidence that real web searchers are doing the clicking thru.

These ponzi schemes and cabals of kiddies are not good partners for Goto, nor their paying adult clients!

[end letter]

I'm sure there are a number of schemes floating around... some of them might be along the lines of "pay 'em to surf" and get the funds to pay the surfers from Goto.com affiliate revenues.

Even if some of these are legitimate searches, for the most part we are talking about a qualitatively different traffic stream. Lower quality.

I am hoping for some sort of help or acknowledgement from Goto on this issue. Preferably, a shift in direction to a smaller, higher quality base of affiliates.

Comparing notes with other Goto customers experiencing the same things or at least suspecting foul play may help to separate real problem affiliates from the legitimate ones.

[This message has been edited by andrewgoodman (edited 06-11-2000).]

I wrote to FindWhat:

quote:

---

I am sorry, but I do not believe that anyone who wants to find anything on the web could possibly use any of these "search engines". In my opinion, these are ***bogus*** search engines that have been set-up with the unique intention of getting unlawful profit from small, almost undetectable, amounts of bogus clicks.

---

I received a vague reply from FindWhat, saying in substance that there is nothing wrong and that the only way to avoid clicks from these partners is to reduce my bids.

What do you think?

[This message has been edited by Mark Wolk (edited 09-04-2001).]

What are some of the url's to their affiliates so I can see exactly what they are doing?

Thanks

Whois Results for youthhostel.com
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Central, HK
HK

Administrative Contact:
DNS Support dns@ultsearch.com
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Central, HK
HK
Phone- 852 2537 9677
Fax-
Technical Contact:
DNS Support dns@ultsearch.com
Ultimate Search
GPO Box 7862
Central, HK
HK
Phone- 852 2537 9677
Fax-

Record updated on 2001-06-25 15:00:41.
Record created on 2001-06-25.
Record expires on 2002-06-25.
Database last updated on 2001-09-01 04:30:51 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.ULTSEARCH.COM 202.84.198.59
NS2.ULTSEARCH.COM 212.100.224.102

Sounds fishy to me, but I don't know anything more...

Finetimesearch, websearch123, sureseeker and melvista are not owned by Ult. Search, so I don't know about them...

[This message has been edited by lawgal (edited 09-01-2001).]

Andrew

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ferret:
Where do you see the GoHip reference on SearchFuel.com? Is it on their affiliates sites?

What are some of the url's to their affiliates so I can see exactly what they are doing?

Thanks

---

This company was sending up to 20 bogus hits everyday, I complained to Findwhat and posted about it at a board or two. I emailed melvista and finally figured out that they had bought a similar url to a very popular uniform reseller. This url www.lifeuniform.com/ leads to a website owned by a national retailer of medical uniforms. In its market it is a well known name. Melvista will register similar urls, and point them to your keywords. The following url was pointed at my most expensive keyword, but I managed to get them to stop, www.lifeuniforms.com Not scumware but a scum tactic.

I sent an email to them asking to get sonme urls of their partner sites so I could see how it worked and their response wasHello

Sorry but we have not officially launched this site yet.

That and the search site you sent me seems to have no visible website entrance so I have no idea how a surfer would have been searching there.

Here is another good example of a scum tactic, look in your logs, getting any hits from sureseeker? If someone searches on sureseeker for cheerleader pompoms uniforms, http://www.sureseeker.com/sbsearch.pl?search=cheerleader+cheerleading+pompoms+uniforms

I get bogus click through that I have to pay for. Why? I'm bidding on "uniforms". I'm ONLY suppose to come up if the search is for "uniforms". Sureseeker has set-up their system to bring up my site and any other FindWhat bidder of the keyword uniforms. None of us sell cheerleader uniforms or pompoms. Sureseeker is wasting their searchers time and costing us money.

The only one who benefits is Sureseeker.

Email sent to FindWhat and Sureseeker referencing this thread. Page has been copied to hard drive in case they remove evidence of this scum tactic.

[This message has been edited by unreviewed (edited 09-01-2001).]

More to come...

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ferret:
Well you might want to be worried about those clicks. How many came from searchfuel.com anyway?

I sent an email to them asking to get sonme urls of their partner sites so I could see how it worked and their response wasHello

Sorry but we have not officially launched this site yet.

That and the search site you sent me seems to have no visible website entrance so I have no idea how a surfer would have been searching there.

---

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000612/wr/tech_networkcommerce_dc_1.html

Goto is actually paying this company $2.4 million to put the Goto engine on its network of sites.

Most of us will be happier to see our traffic increase via these more businesslike channels.

I guess if FindWhat do not terminate their realationship with these bogus search engines, it will be up to all of us advertisers to terminate our relationship with FindWhat. Not to mention the possibility of legal action, as in this instance FindWhat are clearly the active accomplices of an illegal scheme.

[This message has been edited by Mark Wolk (edited 09-04-2001).]

However in my case my pageviews are roughly what I would expect from the number of daily visitors. Im sure there a few iffy clicks in there but my bids are all 0.01-0.03 which in my experience is mostly legit. (its not worth a tricksters time to click on these)

For the higher bid traffic though, you are probably spot on the money here.

Who are sureseeker and why are my findwhat results being displayed on their site for search terms I do not use? They are combining some keywords which is ffin useless to me.

Im suspicious now.

Most of the search engines listed here are using that $49.00 smartsearch PPC software.

One of it's "features" is that it will pull in results from other PPCs based on your search terms. I don't know how that software's algorithm works, but I assume that it runs the remote query for all of the terms individually, which would explain results that "match" for your non explicit keyword phrase searches as you're seeing in the examples here.

Sometimes, you get what you pay for.... in this case, these engines are taking some abuse for mistakes that are "almost" out of their control.

John

Others get set up with pay to click groups and start getting real garbage traffic. People put links up that say something like "Click For Free Gift" and it is a link to the PPC for the deyword with the highest Cost to Advertiser:" so the traffic that winds up Scummed with htese tactics are PO'd by the time they see what was done to them.

As long as there are bidders at these bottom feeding PPC's there will be fraud usually with the PPC as an active conspiritor.

When we get the ScumWare battle won, I want to launch some new services here. One would be a directory of PPC engines and in order to get listed they will be required to fill out a form that ask specific questions that we have learned to be the largest sources of fraudulent clicks.

After the form is submitted we will have a team of volunteers to investigate the info and post their finding.

Members who have used that PPC can post their experiences to the listing.

The Members here control a largr percentage of the PPC bidding universe. We can have a real impact on the low-end PPC. Not just against, but a PPC that passes the review process can expect to recieve a lot of new accounts.

Most small players are fair. I have accounts with Bigwhat, Search123, Brainfox, FindItQuick etc. and get a very small traffic from them. Nothing wrong with that. That's targeting.

But if dubious schemes are supported by larger players like FindWhat, there is reason for concern.