PPC Blog & Search Engine Marketing Worst Practices: PPC Villain

Now we all know that while technically you can bid on your competitor’s name and keywords but you’re not supposed to have those keywords actually show up within your ads.  Due to all that trademark and copyright BS. Also, they whine about it.

But a most evil workaround has recently been getting attention that we here at the Villain feel requires front and center spotlight attention! That is: bidding on those same keywords, but writing awful, horrible ads! Throw in common spelling mistakes that the engines won’t pick up on, offers that aren’t true (“50% off everything” makes lots of people click) and then set the display and destination URLs to the competitors site!

For extra-evil points, list the competitor’s phone number in the ad, but not only is it the wrong number, make it interesting! List the number for the local STD testing clinic in their area code. Animal castration specialist, taxidermy, she-male escort service or biological waste management are great ideas that will ensure that customer won’t try dialing that number twice!

All you have to do to get your branded ads shown ahead is bid a little more. It’s an auction system! And since only one ad per site will show, you’ll squeeze them right out.

While yes, you are driving traffic to their site, it’s not going to be pretty traffic. People come looking for that free shipping, discount, or puppy and find none of those things! So, they get annoyed and leave, thus leaving a bad taste in their mouth and resuming their search again on a non-branded search term.

This is where you come in! Rescue them from the awful competitor that can’t spell and tells lies! They’ll thank you for it.

And what are they going to do about it? Call Google and whine? Yeah, but Google will only pull the ad if they call and the offer is actually invalid. Misspellings, as long as their common, they have to let ride. They can send a “cease and assist” on your behalf, but who’s afraid of that? Not you, because you started a brand new account for this villainous plot, using the $50 free credit you found online. The best part is Google won’t and can’t tell the complaining competitor who you are!

If you really want to go to town, use MSN AdCenter. Not only will they do nothing (since they refuse to get involved between advertisers) the competitor has to call, sit on hold and cycle through several ad reps since no one knows what to do when this situation comes up. Eventually they’ll say that they’ll “look into” ads with false information, but they will soon lose interest and go back to being hypnotized by the gold spinning “loading” circle.

Watch out on Yahoo though. Those guys will actually shut you down. Pronto.

It’s so diabolical I almost feel bad for releasing this information. Almost.