Metrix4Media wins the prestigious Double Facepalm Epic Fail Award

Congratulations to Metrix4Media for winning the  local internet marketing blunder of 2009 award.  As you see to the left, their prize is the coveted “double facepalm” from Picard and Riker.  Even though there are 22 days left in 2009, I feel comfortable going ahead and handing this one out.  I’m pretty sure anyone in the industry would agree that it would require an extraordinary display of incompetence to beat this.

So last night I’m working late on some new ad groups for an attorney client.  I’ve had this client for a little over 2 years now, so I’m very familiar with who his competitors are in this city’s ppc space.  More importantly, I am quick to recognize when a new player steps on to the field.  Anyways, I was running some queries on Google to see what position the new ads I had created were showing up.  All of a sudden, the sponsored search results were flooded with ads I had never seen before.  The first thing I noticed about all of these ads were that all the landing pages were various sub-domains of locaplacement.net.

I’d like to point out that I did not actually click on the ads to get this information.  If you still haven’t downloaded Aaron Wall’s  SEO Toolbar for Firefox, here is another reason to do so.  The toolbar will display the actual destination URL below or to the side of the display URL.  I generally use this information to see who is actually managing the ad.  For example, if it’s Yodle you’ll see labs.natpal.com followed by some modifiers. If it’s Reach Local you’ll see something like <business name>.reachlocal.net.

Here is a screen shot of the top 3 sponsored ads I saw so you can see what I am talking about:

Destination URLs revealed courtesy of Aaron Wall's SEO Toolbar

The above results were produced from the query “attorney” from a Raleigh NC IP address.  I’m actually in Charlotte but Clear wireless was pulling an IP from Raleigh for whatever reason.  The 3rd ad is obviously appropriate.  The second one clearly is not.   Can’t tell if the first one is without investigating the site.

The cool thing about the links produced by the SEO Toolbar is that YOU CAN click those links without Google charging the owner of the ad.  This is simply because it calls the destination url and is not actually tracked by Google.  So upon investigating the site of Bankruptcy Attorney Joel Jay Rogge, I found that he is a member of the New Hampshire Bar Association.  Definitely not anywhere close to North Carolina.   Now let me show you what the sponsored results on the sidebar were for the very same query.

Sidebar results from the SAME query!

This is not a joke!  The other 7 ads ALL belonged to Metrix4Media!  To save you time, I’ll go ahead and give you the results of the location checks:

• Position 4 – Hampton Roads Legal Services, Virginia Beach VA.
• Position 5 – Segel & Solymosi, Erie PA.
• Position 6 – Austin & Dick, High Point NC (96 miles from Raleigh).
• Position 7 – Carl W Potvin, Rochester NH.
• Position 8 – Justin C Caramagno, Portsmouth NH.
• Position 9 – Tom McGuire, Pensacola FL.
• Position 10 – Kenneth Hiller, Amherst NY.

So in summary, searching the word “attorney” from an IP address based in Raleigh NC produced 9 results managed by the same company which consisted of 6 different states and 8 different cities!  This could not be a glitch on Google’s part due to the fact that 9 out of the 10 possible results belonged to the same company!  To make sure it wasn’t a glitch, I waited an hour and checked again.  The results were the same.  After waking up this morning and checking again 5 hours later, the majority of the results belonged to Metrix4Media.

Based on what I know about how Google works, it was clear to me that all these ads were/are serving NATIONWIDE for the term “attorney” and even more expensive keywords like “personal injury attorney”, “workers compensation attorney”, etc.

Some of you professionals reading this may be thinking that there is another explanation for this.  I had the same thoughts, so I will go ahead and share some other things I checked.

Google Ad Preview tool set to Honolulu Hawaii

I went to the Google Adwords Preview tool and set the location to Honolulu Hawaii.   Notice the ad in position 4 has the Honolulu, HI descriptor that signifies it is geo-targeted to that area.

The rest are Metrix4Media clients that are at least 1000 miles away.

There were more of their clients in the top 3 spot, but don’t feel it necessary to post it.

The last thing I did was get on my laptop, which I had not used all day.  I put in my Sprint wireless card, and saw that it was pulling an IP address from New York.

I remembered in some of the screen shots I made, there were Metrix4Media clients in Raleigh, and that they were showing the Raleigh NC description under the display URL.   This meant that these campaigns were definitely geo-targeted for the Raleigh NC area.

If it were ALSO targeted nationwide, then it would show with no description when I performed the “attorney” query from the NYC IP address.  Sure enough, that is what happened!

Here is a screen shot for BarryWinston.com when I was using a Raleigh NC IP address, and right after it will be one from the New York City IP address.

BarryWinston.com compared between Raleigh and NYC IP

So basically what happened is that some amateur set up these campaigns with the default set to nationwide, and then went in and added the geo-targeting.  I’ve never heard of Metrix4Media before, but after doing a little research I see that they are owned by the Hearst Corporation.  Could this be the epitome example of what happens when old media tries to enter a world they do not understand?   The Metrix4Media website states that it was founded by a couple of  “Pay Per Click industry pioneers” in the early 2000s.   I’ve been doing ppc at least that long and don’t call myself a “pioneer.”  If the people behind this company really did something of merit back in the day, then they’ve officially lost their status as far as I’m concerned.  This was a JUNIOR mistake.  I have a feeling they might try to blame it on a new guy or intern.  I’ll go ahead and respond that it’s not an excuse.  I know when I sell myself to a client, they get me and not someone else. I don’t farm it out to a college kid or some guy in Pakistan on RentACoder.com.

In the short time that I spent investigating this, I counted at least 35 Metrix4Media clients that were affected by this.  I have a feeling that the actual number could be a lot higher, as I only investigated the attorney query.  In this query, I came across client ads of theirs belonging to a couple of insurance companies.   The sad thing is this wasn’t the only thing wrong.  I checked out a few of the sites they were sending the pay traffic, and there was absolutely no tracking of any kind.  No analytics, no phone call tracking, etc.  Some didn’t even have a contact form, but rather just a link to an email address.  I know the email harvesters out there are greatful to Metrix4Media for that.

Since I’ve gone this far, I might as well comment on the ads.  THEY WERE HORRIBLE!  The majority of them didn’t contain the keyword I searched anywhere!  The display URLS were in all lowercase, and the ad titles were absolutely  devoid of any marketing know how.  I about fell out of my chair when I saw this one:

Welcome to Our Website?? SRSLY?

“Welcome To Our Website“? Come on really?  SRSLY???   What did they save that one from 1998?  Did they have an old Overture spreadsheet laying around and import it into Adwords?

I made a list of all the Metrix4Media clients I found that were affected by this.   I should give them all a call and steal them away.  It honestly wouldn’t be that hard.   But I cannot do this because:

• a)  I’m old school. I don’t cold call.  Never have, never will.
• b) I’m pretty much slammed right now and have a waiting list lined up through March.

So what should I do with this list?   I know!  I’ll post it as a HOT LEADS list for my colleagues.  Hell, I might even forward it to the only nice guy at Yodle (Jay Batton).  I know they would do 100xs better than what Metrix4Media has done.  If/when you officially take one (or more)  away from Metrix4Media, let me know via a comment so I can update the list! So without further ado:

UPDATE: 12/11/2009

Decided to remove the list today.  Hopefully some good people made use of it.  I took it down because I didn’t want it to become a problem for the businesses mentioned.  Point was made.

Doug Furney responded in a comment that the affected businesses will be getting a refund on the inappropriate clicks.   I still think Mr Furney has more to address than this one incident.

When I first read the comment from Brent about the Vaseline commercial played at the iJango brainwashing event in Las Vegas, I thought it was a joke.  IveTriedThat.com  recently posted his report if you want to read it without having to sift through my comments section.  It’s pretty funny!

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw someone had actually posted footage of this incident on the Youtubes!  I believe this is definitely something worthy of being played off by Keyboard Cat!

(yes I edited this for comedic effect. Here is where you can see the raw footage.)

Danger, Will Robinson! Ijango is bad for Google advertisers.

This post is a public service announcement aimed at advertisers who use the Google Content Network.

A new MLM scheme called iJango has recently reared it’s ugly head, and it directly threatens your ROI.  Unfortunately, iJango was able to get a Google Adsense account, even though it clearly violates Adsense program policies. If you read the policies page, please notice the 2nd topic labeled “Encouraging Clicks.”  It states the following:

Encouraging Clicks
Publishers may not ask others to click their ads or use deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. This includes, but is not limited to, offering compensation to users for viewing ads or performing searches, promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior or placing images next to individual ads.

The part I put in boldface describes what iJango is all about.

Ijango is a hacked up version of Omar Al Zabir’s Dropthings, a free, open source, AJAX web portal. An easy way to prove this is by simply doing a site:president.ijango.com query in Google.  The person programming iJango forgot to change the built-in meta descriptions, and Google indexed it the last time it crawled the site.  In case you are catching this article after they fixed it, here is a screenshot of the query at the time this article was written:

Proof that iJango is using the Free, Open Source, portal script called Dropthings

A month before it actually launched, there was a lot of hype and propaganda generated by the people behind it.  It has been pitched as a way for people to make money by using the internet, viewing ads, and performing searches.    Here is a link to their latest video, and it is a great example of what I’m talking about: http://www.ijango.biz

The type of people who are falling for this scheme all have the same type of mental deficiency.  They are all ignorant as to how internet advertising works, and they have a disturbing sense of entitlement to YOUR online advertising dollars.  They all believe that this is some revolutionary idea that has never been done, and that they are all going to become millionaires by simply surfing the internet.   Ijango is nothing more than the old “paid to surf” scheme, wrapped up in a new and shiny package, and being sold as something else. It’s one of those “accepted scams” in the sense that it’s a little bit of truth mixed in with a lot of lies, and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ignorant.   The good news is that it has not worked since it launched on Saturday.  The bad news is you’ve got an army of brainwashed, “get rich quick” people chomping at the bit ready to run up your CPM ads and click your CPC ads, so that they can GET PAID!  Here is a screenshot of some tweets about iJango from it’s “directors.”  This is an excellent example of the mentality of the people using and promoting iJango.

Example of the mentality of iJango directors.

What can I do about the iJango threat?

Glad you asked, because that’s the whole purpose of this post.  The most important thing you can do is to add ijango.com to your site exclusion list.  In case you are not sure how to do this, I am providing this simple “step by step” guide on how to block your ads from being served to the rabid dogs on iJango.

Step 1: Log in to your Adwords account and select the 4th tab over labeled “Tools.”  You will see a drop down appear, and you will want to click on “More Tools >>”  as seen in the screenshot.

Select More Tools in the Google Adwords interface

Step 2: You will now be at the “Tools” page for your Adwords account.  On the left column, look for the header labeled “Optimize Your Ads.”  The 5th clickable item is called “Site and Category Exclusion”, and you will want to click that.

Click on "Site and Category Exclusion" from the Adwords Tools page

Step 3: You should now be on the “Site and Category Exclusion” page as pictured below.  If you are running multiple campaigns, you will need to select one from the drop down menu.  Once your campaign is selected, simply enter ijango.com into the text box, and click “Save All Changes.”  It’s important that you put in ijango.com WITHOUT the www.   iJango has subdomains for all it’s users, so doing it this way will block your ads from being serviced on iJango sitewide!  If you have multiple campaigns, you will need to repeat this process for each one!  Now your advertising dollars are protected from the people that feel they are entitled to it for doing nothing!

Enter ijango.com into the text box, and click Save all Changes

Sorry for the delay on this.  I decided to do a video because it’s a lot easier to explain this way.  The video below shows how iJango is not unique, and that it uses technology that has been around of years.  I also show a serious contradiction in what is being advertised about iJango, and what is actually in it’s terms of service.

You cannot make money by giving iJango away!

Also if you read the original article, please take note of the update I made.  I address some of the comments made about Cameron’s “side of the story”, and posted a link to it if you are interested in reading it.

Stay tuned for Part 3!