Less trust from Google users? Are you kidding me? Like they know the difference? 80% of the time, they'll be taken to the same 3 or so offers no matter what! They don't know it's someone exploiting adwords!To anyone who thinks it doesn't hurt the industry, think again. Think of him as the neighborhood crack dealer; sure, he's just banking or doing his thing or whatever. Doesn't affect you, right? I mean, he's not trespassing on your territory, so why do you care?
Eventually your whole neighborhood is full of crack houses, crime rate is high and no one wants to live there anymore. It all started with a guy who was just gettin his, right?
Perhaps a stupid analogy, but I think you get the point. Pulling stunts like this will only cause more scrutiny by Google, a bad name for affiliate marketing in general, and less trust by Google users.
You'd expect loop holes in the organic results; that's to be expected. But for AdWords there is no excuse.
He wrote in another thread that he's not using vouchers or stolen funds/cards.He has to have found in exploit in the voucher system to get unlimited usage and or generate vouchers or use stolen funds. Ringtones generally don't convert that great, especially for very broad phrases. And he is bidding very high.
He wrote in another thread that he's not using vouchers or stolen funds/cards.
I think I've figured out exactly how he has exploited Google's algorithms... I would not be surprised if his quality score is very very very high, resulting in pretty low CPCs. Kudos to you, RingtoneMan.
The landing page affects only the QS for the minimum bid, not the QS for ad ranking and CPC calculation. And even then, the landing page is only one of many factors, some of which can be influenced even if you're direct linking.He couldn't have exploited quality score, he's direct linking! There's no way he can do anything with QS, because he has no control over the landing page.