Internet Marketing and a General State of Distrust
Having been involved in internet marketing since 1997, I’ve traveled far and wide online and participated in many different communities and forums as I learn different facets of the trade. There’s always one general common theme: the other guy is cheating!
On search engine forums you read a lot about how Yahoo and Google (mostly Yahoo) are cheating advertisers out of their PPC dollars by allowing rampant click fraud through their distribution network.
On domainer boards, you can always find people challenging the parking companies because they’re either having their accounts terminated or the parking company is fudging the numbers and keeping an ever-growing share for themselves. Or it’s Yahoo and Google who are keeping the share.
On affiliate marketing focused discussion boards you can find lots of posts about how various affiliate programs screw affiliates paying paltry commissions or by letting them run up huge commissions and then terminating the account right before it’s time to pay the affiliate but also divulging some of the shady methods in which they go about generating traffic and making sales which means the affiliate program managers need to pay small commissions to hedge against all the junk that comes their way.
Put it all together and what do you get? A general state of distrust. It’s the OTHER guy that’s always doing the cheating! Kind of sad, really. Makes the internet look sleazy and unprofessional. But, when you have such a low barrier to entry, you attract all types.
After a recent get together of fellow SEO “Nerds” , I would have to say no one is really cheating. We all are learning from someone elses strategies and building upon them. PPC on the other hand is usually click fraud from competitors, you cannot really do away with it. Imagine how cheap leads would be without competitors clicking on them?
***From Andy - I hope you’re saying this with tongue firmly implanted in cheek. Most vanilla SEO conferences or organized get togethers usually brings out people that have absolutely no clue what they’re doing. And the ‘experts’ who have been invited to speak share the most banal tips. Go a little further down the rabbit hole…
In regards to click fraud, the majority of click fraud actually isn’t committed by competitors. Competitors usually aren’t smart enough or committed enough to pull off click fraud at large enough a level that it would have a significant impact. The majority of the click fraud lies in the distribution networks.***