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> Mr. Abuhazim tried reaching Google to explain his dilemma, but he was repeatedly routed to an offshore call center. Operators, he said, “treated me like I’m s
by arbuge 7y ago
> Mr. Abuhazim tried reaching Google to explain his dilemma, but he was repeatedly routed to an offshore call center. Operators, he said, “treated me like I’m stupid.” With his businesses pushed off the first page of Google Maps results, incoming calls halved. He said he was on the verge of closing.
Google Ads customer support has been like this for many people ever since it was outsourced offshore. It is basically useless at this point.
On a different note, I do find it amazing that this business owner thought it would be a good idea to do the following:
"Last year, he was approached by a marketing firm that offered to lift his business listings on Google Maps for a fee in the tens of thousands of dollars. Mr. Abuhazim agreed to the deal."
If you wonder where that money went, see the screenshot in the article where he clearly shows an average CPC of almost $9.
- walshemj 7y agoA few years ago I did a bit of PPC for plumbers in London the CPC was over £30. And the fake business scams have been well known for well over a decade.
- arbuge 7y agoSo how do they make money bidding on those keywords? Assuming a 20% conversion rate, which is probably very generous, that's £150 per customer. Is an average plumber call in London many times more expensive than that then?
- hedora 7y agoIf the price is driven up by scammers, I assume they pay with stolen credit cards, etc.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoThis cpc could be perfectly normal, one of those keywords where the prices have always been insane.
- Spooky23 7y agoIts easy to explain — actual business people don’t understand how to work the inscrutable nature of Google. So they look for advice. I think it’s bizarre that stuff like this is trivial for scammers but impossible for legit businesses. My son’s catholic school has been around since 1950. A few students goofing off wrote some negative reviews, and somehow they are in a limbo where nobody can post reviews or modify the listing. I’m on the board and help with advertising... The funny thing is that it costs Google money — we can’t associate AdWords with the Maps listing. Just a few thousand bucks a year, but still money.
- StudentStuff 7y agoWhy should a Catholic School be advertising on Google?
- briandear 7y agoSo they can attract students whose parents are searching for a school.
- StudentStuff 7y agoSeems like a crummy way to reach potential students, wouldn't you want to tap the local church's congregations? That is how the Catholic schools run in Seattle, though they don't have the same 20% non-Catholic full ride scholarship that they do in Portland (which made for a much better educational experience IMO). The Summer Lunch Program (which has a much broader target audience/geographic area) in Seattle has experimented with online advertising, but had poor results. The keys to the kingdom really are reaching kids (and their parents) where they are, in schools, after school programs, and perhaps some online platforms (though the targeting is generally ineffective on Facebook/Google for this type of advertising).
- icebraining 7y ago> wouldn't you want to tap the local church's congregations? I'm assuming they do both. I don't know about the US, but around here Catholic schools accept non-Catholics as well, and those may not be connected to the church.