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Your Google Adwords Click Counts...

by Talltom1
9 replies
Good afternoon fellow champions...

I recently fired up a brand new website, and have been promoting it via Google Adwords, and several other traffic generating strategies.

I've started paying attention to what Google has been telling me about the number of clicks it sends me each day.

It turns out that over the past two weeks, their number of clicks that I'm being billed for is, on average, 28.6% more than the grand total of ALL visitors to my site, including visitors coming from other sources.

I sent in a customer service request last week, and tomorrow I will be sending them a spreadsheet with the day by day breakdown, plus a complete list of all of the IP addresses that have hit my site during the past few weeks.

I'm just curious if anybody else has come across this issue before. And BTW, I haven't noticed this with Yahoo PPC (don't bother using MSN, Windows Live, Bing, or whatever its called today).

Any insights from this group?

Talltom
#adwords #click #counts #google
  • Profile picture of the author Mary Green
    Hm... Google has been good with refunding me in these kinds of incidents, it will be interesting to see what you get out of it. Will you post back here what you hear from them, their explanation should be interesting.
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  • Profile picture of the author joelraitt
    Have not heard much on Google, but check out Facebook, it is a mess with fraud right now. They are starting to give out some refunds I beleive!
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    Work smart, work hard, never give up. Learn with me here: http://www.joelraitt.com

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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew Iannotti
      I too also noticed this when running an Adword Campaign. I was charged for x amount of clicks and had less visitors than clicks...I was scratching my head as well...
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  • Profile picture of the author Mitch Miller
    I have a site that I use nothing but adwords to promote and I find that the google reporting is pretty much in agreement with my awstats on the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author CPA_OFFICER
    I hope this isn't happening to me... I only monitor the PPC one a week :S

    Phil,
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  • Profile picture of the author Talltom1
    Update....

    I've submitted a detailed explanation earlier today to Google via email. While going through the numbers, I also noticed that they were consistently overshooting my daily budget every day by 20%. So, if I set a budget of $10 per day, they consistently bill for $12.

    I mentioned in my email that over the past 12-18 months, I've easily spent thousands of dollars with them. Not big money for them, but enough to get my attention. I advised that I will now be auditing all of the 'clicks' I 'haven't' received during the past year.

    Are they short of cash, or just buy a new executive jet? I'll keep everybody posted on the outcome

    Talltom
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    • Profile picture of the author Talltom1
      Here's an early update to my progress at resolving this....

      Google has been prompt at responding, overnight, (must be somebody in India). Basically the response consists of a sentence or two of custom text, followed by a lengthy cut and paste group of paragraphs about why clicks and visitors are different.

      There's been no discussion about why their clicks are consistently twice as high as the number of actual visitors they send me. Nor has there been a response to my concern about consistently overshooting my daily budget by 20%

      After exchanging 2-3 worthless messages which resolved absolutely nothing, I today responded with the following message....

      "Last request....

      Either escalate this issue to someone in your organization who provides
      specific answers to this concern about overbilling, or I will turn this
      issue over to my attorney to get the answers I need. I know that I'm not
      the only one with this concern, and I am prepared to make an issue out of
      this."

      The saga continues.
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      • Profile picture of the author arsde
        Actually lots of people do this to get money. Was a guy in sweden for a time ago who sold matchsticks (I think thats the name) He always took out 1 stick from the matchbox and he saved lots of money.
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  • Profile picture of the author mediaguy
    I got a letter a few months ago from an Attorney explaining that they had a class action lawsuit going on with Google for over charging - and what you have explained here is exactly what the class action suit was about - I'd love to see the out come here... They are already under the micro scope and it looks like a few million in refunds that they will have to pay out in this situation.
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    Just Make It Happen - Stop Making Excuses! Only failure is not taking action!
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