Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What to do against competitor PPC sabotage?
-
This morning a competitor of ours decided to go on a PPC rampage against us. Basically our budgeting money was spent within the first hour of going live on bing. Its pretty obvious whats going on as we had a tremendous amount of clicks all from the exact same keyword within a short period of time.
Obviously first step was to contact bing and they are going to refund me a credit once they go through their process, but they didnt really give me confidence about the future. It seems they may not be able to prevent this from continually happening.. ?
The attacker used some sort of IP spoofing as the clicks were all from different IP's which is probably why it snuck pasted Bing. Wondering what have you guys done in the past to prevent this or combat it?
Thankfully it didnt happen on google
-
That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear that this happened to you. I don't think there's anything you can do against this, but I do have a few questions just to get a better understanding of what was going on, if you don't mind sharing.
How much was your budget?
For what match type?
What was your CPC?
What location were you targeting?
What niche are you in? -
I agree with Jesse,
This is sad and it shows you how many people can only use this techniques in order to overpower competitors, instead of working their a***s off in order to achieve good results.
I feel sorry for them, but on the other side, if I were you I would be happy, because you are doing a good job with your campaign that this competitor can't really compete with.
I don't think you can really prevent this, instead notify bing and if you know exactly which company has done it to you, you might report them.
-
Yea I agree with you, if this is how you try to compete then its shows a huge flaw in your business practices. Regardless, I have to try and see how to prevent this in the future as BING was unable to prevent it. Would appreciate feedback anyone can offer!
-
Ugh. I'm sorry to hear this.
I'm disheartened by the amount of people on these forums being attacked by competitors with bad backlinks and fraudulent PPC charges. Is this really the direction businesses are going in the online marketing world?
Sad...
Sorry I have no suggestions. Except maybe to have faith in karma?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to know competitors keywords for adwords
I want to run google campaign for adwords and I want to target keywords that my competitor is ranking for. How can I know what are the keywords that are helping my competitors the most. Is there some way so that I can know what my competitor is bidding for those keywords. I heard it also depends on the landing page quality. Please suggest the best strategy to run adwords at lower cost and yet perform well. I am willing to run campaign for this website . It is basically meant to connect manufacturers representatives and independent sales reps to businesses. Any suggestions are welcome.
Paid Search Marketing | | HelloWorld20200 -
How to Find Competitor PPC Keywords ?
Can anyone suggest best way to find all PPC keywords of a competitor. Any tool recommendation ?
Paid Search Marketing | | singhmahendra0 -
Will pausing my AdWords PPC campaigns impact my organic rankings?
Over 95% of my revenue comes from organic search; less than 5% comes from AdWords PPC (all other sources account for about 1-2%). My ROI on AdWords is roughly zero. It's negative if you include opportunity costs. My question is: if I pause all of my AdWords campaigns, is there ANY chance that my organic rankings (and organic click-through rates) will suffer? This is really two questions. First, could Google retaliate to my reduced ad spending by dropping my rankings? Second, will searchers think differently about my organic link if they don't also see the accompanying paid link on the SERP?
Paid Search Marketing | | ahirai2 -
PPC sessions being counted as organic in GA
I am coming across a very frustrating phenomenon in one of my PPC campaign reporting. In short: I believe that GA is counting some of my PPC sessions as organic (not provided). Has anybody come across this before? I believe they are being counted as organic because of the following: the website is brand new and does not rank for anything but their branded terms the few keywords showing up in GA are the terms we target our PPC towards the amount of sessions of Paid Search (in channels) and AdWords sessions don't match up (The number of actual PPC clicks is substantially higher than the Paid Search sessions) PPC clicks and sessions don't even match up in the AdWords part of GA GWT shows 0% CTR for any non branded terms Tell me I am crazy, but I really don't think I am. I just don't have the hard evidence to back it up. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Paid Search Marketing | | Rebecca.Holloway0 -
PPC question for the experts
I know this is paid search but since Moz had a section for it, I thought it would be ok to ask. 🙂 According to: http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2497836?hl=en Broad match modifier +tennis +shoes Ads may show on searches for tennis shoes
Paid Search Marketing | | MattAntonino
buy tennis shoes
best shoes for tennis Ads won't show on searches for running shoes
tennis sneakers I'm using (for a client) +wedding +photographer. It should show on wedding photographer hire a wedding photographer best wedding photographer in dallas It should not show on photographer in Dallas become a photographer dallas pictures But it is. Why would this happen? Isn't that exactly what it says it won't show up on? Also, Google writes: Don't leave space between the plus sign (+) prefix and the word you're modifying! •Correct: +leather +shoes
•Incorrect: + leather + shoes
•Incorrect: +leather+shoes Yet the client was told by Google the opposite. "I spoke with Google and they confirmed that the space after the plus and before wedding (“+ wedding”) would notrequire “wedding” to show up." How on Earth does this reconcile or make ANY sense? ETA: This is fairly clear to me: Be sure there are no spaces between the + and modified words, but do leave spaces between words. The right way to do it: +formal +shoes. The wrong way to do it: +formal+shoes. http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/bmm.html0 -
Cost per click on PPC
What is the best way to get a good cpc estimate other than actually running the campaign? I have had several people asking for budgets and wasn't sure how to answer. Any suggestions?
Paid Search Marketing | | ClickIt0 -
Index or Noindex PPC Landing Pages?
Hi all, We have thousands of PPC landing pages for our products. Usually, these pages are very similar and may differ only slightly for the keyword in question. The landing pages are sitting in a sub-domain of our site. From SEO perspective, assuming we don't want to get hit by Panda, Penguin and other animals Google stuffed into its ranking algorithm...Is it a good idea not to index these landing pages at all (i.e. add meta robots - noindex, nofollow to these pages)? What say you? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | ShivaS0 -
What are the best sources for finding competitor PPC spending by category?
Can anyone provide sources for gathering paid search advertising spend for competitors, preferably by category? Thank you.
Paid Search Marketing | | JoeAmadon0