18 ms·

Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

419 points by siggi 7y ago

tyingq 7y ago
Sounds like excluding all other countries is the only solution. Google does provide a CSV with all the AdWords recognized countries: https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/geotargeting https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/geot... You should be able to copy the list to the clipboard and paste into the exclusion list.
- janesvilleseo 7y ago
  This is the answer. I can’t tell you the times I have had to tell clients and other search marketing professionals that they need to have a negative list. Budgets are not infinite and they need to be managed to get the most out of them.
  - dwd 7y ago
    I've mentioned this previously as a dark pattern that trips most people up. It's probably fair to assume setting a target location is it, not that you additionally have to exclude the rest of the world. And it's buried in the advanced settings, so anyone looking for a quick default setup just do the minimum required setting presented to them.
ben_jones 7y ago
I wonder how google handles vpn users, particularly in countries where vpns are fairly ubiquitous like China or even Iran. If someone in Turkey is clearly identified as a Turkish user despite having a vpn in the United States, I shouldn’t be charged for them right?
- muratsu 7y ago
  You might be technically right but Google is incentivized to charge you. Also, it's probably really hard (technically) to resolve your real identity.
  - SXX 7y ago
    It is super simple for Google to resolve real identify of most of users and fraudsters. At least there absolutely no justification for Google not to detect fraud in cases where OP could do it using his own statistics. Your browser by default leak your OS version (Chinese using older versions very often), locale (of course there is tons of users with Thai or Turkish locale outside of their home country, right?), fonts, etc, etc. Basically everything is can be used and actually actively used for fingerprinting. In cases of some proxies WebRTC can just leak your real IP. I wont even start on the fact that Google controls web browser that is used by 50% internet users and it's sent a lot of data to the mothership. And yeah if you try to mess with Google itself by let's say mass registering accounts you'll understand how good they are at protecting their own infrastructure and money. At the same time why should they care about someone else lost money? So they don try to fix it.
deleted 7y ago
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wolco 7y ago
The wording makes targetting useless. But other questions came up. Why do so many quit google after less than five years? How does a company who's product is a push notification when someone clicks get funding?
- kevinventullo 7y ago
  > Why do so many quit google after less than five years? Usually initial stock grants are for four years. If the price goes up enough and then relatively flattens out, it can happen that one’s total compensation begins decreasing after the fourth year. That, and 4-5 years is enough time to build a sufficiently large safety net that one can attempt to strike out on one’s own.
- unreal37 7y ago
  Did he get funding? Or he's just unemployed working on an app?
tehwebguy 7y ago
Google bundles bad clicks like a pile of stinking, rotten subprime mortgages and then peppers them with some good clicks and sells them to you like JP Morgan in 2005. Did you read the fine print? Doesn’t matter, you can’t redline it anyway so it’s take it or leave it.
- benologist 7y ago
  Their whole ad empire is desperate for a massive audit. Google had to be sued to deliver a $400,000 refund they owed but later claimed couldn't be delivered, claiming 3rd parties had been paid the funds when it was their own platforms. It turned out Google had accidentally kept $75 million. https://marketingland.com/class-action-lawsuit-accuses-google-of-improperly-withholding-refunds-for-ad-fraud-261219 https://marketingland.com/class-action-lawsuit-accuses-googl...
  - echelon 7y ago
    As someone who has adblocked everything since my teenage years, the whole ad industry seems to be making orders of magnitude more money than it should. I just don't understand how anyone comes to buy things shown in ads. Are ads really effective? I don't buy advertised products. Do we really trust ad tech accounting? They've been caught inflating numbers over and over again. The whole house of cards seems like it could fall over if actually investigated. Google, Facebook, Twitter - every single one of them. Influencer and direct social referral advertising seem much more "legitimate" than injected ad impressions. How can we get the thing to implode? Google has destroyed the web to prop up its ad business. I'd be happy if they couldn't cause any more trouble.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      I think most marketers are aware that a lot (maybe half) of clicks are bots/fraud. At the end of the day, if your ROAS is good, you don't care that much.
    - cbsks 7y ago
      If Google’s ad business dries up, what do you think they will pivot to? It scares me to think about what a desperate company with that much data would do.
appleiigs 7y ago
If I am in Turkey and I google “chicken USA”, I should get shown chicken ads from the USA. And when I click, those chicken producers should pay.
- rtpg 7y ago
  If you hired an ad agency to run radio commercials in Texas and then get a bill saying "oh by the way we found cheap ad space in Tokyo so ran some there too, here's the bill", you'd probably question your relationship with them. I understand it's not the same thing, but it sure smells the same
  - appleiigs 7y ago
    The blog author didn't read the docs. He signed up for a relationship and just assumed it would be different and now he's complaining about it. As I mentioned in another comment: From Google AdWords help docs it says "By default, location targeting includes both physical locations and locations of interest".
- tertius 7y ago
  Only if the advertisers choose to have their ads served to you. They don't owe you ads.
- tyingq 7y ago
  It seems logical that the chance of you buying their chicken is much lower than someone actually in the US. Why should they pay?
  - muratsu 7y ago
    My guess would be that you're making the assumption that I'm looking to buy chicken. It might be the case that someone is just researching "US chicken market"?
    - baddox 7y ago
      And why would most chicken ad publishers want to show ads to those people? I imagine most of those publishers are selling chicken, not information about the US chicken market.
cpsempek 7y ago
This type of behavior allows for a known ad arbitrage strategy. Bing’s PPC network, for instance, use to not have the same geo coverage as AdWords, and when they received traffic from a geo they weren’t serving ads in they would send the search to their US ad network. The strategy then is 1. Buy AdWords ads in countries out of Bing’s coverage, 2. Send these clicks to a page serving your Bing feed’s ads for same/similar keyword search, 3. Realize Bing US CPCs on international AdWords ad buys
- csomar 7y ago
  But how much is your conversion rate for the transferred users. It is not like it is 100%. If it is 5%, you'll need x20 times the CPC to break-even.
  - huac 7y ago
    no, because the Google ads would be served in low CPM countries (eg Turkey) whilst the Bing ads would be served as if the user was from the US (high CPM).
  - cpsempek 7y ago
    Of course, CTR is apart of the profit formula and cannot ignored as you correctly note. It’s not a trivial task to find those verticals or geos where this will be a successful strategy.
deleted 7y ago
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nartz 7y ago
This is completely deceptive, especially showing them as from the US!!! I imagine 90% of AdWords users are not aware of this. Thank you for writing this!
ifthenelseend 7y ago
Google is a scam company. Stop using it.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We've already had to ask you about this, and we ban accounts that keep doing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Akababa 7y ago
Is it possible that they've detected someone using a proxy and traced them back to the US?
- zaroth 7y ago
  Not even remotely.
JeremyMorgan 7y ago
So glad I'm not involved in PPC anymore. We used to catch junk clicks all the time, from many different countries. One company I worked with was local and wanted very targeted local clicks. Nothing I could do could stop clicks from other states and countries, which were useless to them. Don't get me started about Twitter advertsing. Want some followers for your business? Twitter will gladly send you tons of obviously fake profiles as soon as you get too many impressions without a click. Like profiles without real pictures and timelines consisting only of retweets. You have to tolerate an accepted amount of cruft with any PPC campaign.
- trilliumbaker 7y ago
  The cruft is getting worse as Google takes away control from managers and turns it over to AI. It's like how exact match no longer means exact match.
  - treebornfrog 7y ago
    This. And in addition they no longer show average position metric (1) which increases barrier to entry, they now only show impression share. (1) https://www.practicalecommerce.com/say-goodbye-to-average-position-metric-in-google-ads https://www.practicalecommerce.com/say-goodbye-to-average-po...
stinkycatfart 7y ago
Being a SWE on Ads gave him an inclination to use Google products?! Honestly I think this highlights how divorced eng is from real world usage, otherwise he'd know this shit happens. every.damn.day. ad tech is a house of cards and makes me reconsider working at Google every day.
- temp20160423 7y ago
  You work on ads at Google and feel that ad tech is a house of cards? I actually disagree, primarily because of the auction. It's an incredibly clever way to ensure Google's incentives are aligned with the advertisers'. Assuming rational bidders, Google can only charge more per click if the clicks deliver more value to the advertisers. If Google just sends a bunch of garbage clicks to the advertisers, they will just lower their bids.
oceliker 7y ago
I'm somewhat confused here. I live in the US but regularly visit Turkey to see family (say, once a year). I also regularly Google things related to the US when I'm there. Clicks outside the US are not necessarily meaningless -- the screenshot in the article shows that they are targeting people "regularly in the US". Just because I left for a couple of weeks does not mean I abandoned everything related to where I live. There's still value in targeting US ads to me, independent of my current location.
- soraminazuki 7y ago
  The default option says that it targets "people in, or show interest in , your targeted location." The author tightened the settings only after he realized the clicks came from outside the US. Also, it's unnatural that multiple clicks from the same location were made in a quick succession.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    The author tightened the settings only after he realized the clicks came from outside the US It is worse than that, the country targeting setting was already at maximum tightness. This is a very bad dark pattern by Google, there is no setting to strictly target a country. https://miro.medium.com/max/1048/1*5I7qjuarkWtiNltBdR1Quw.png https://miro.medium.com/max/1048/1*5I7qjuarkWtiNltBdR1Quw.pn...
- jasonlfunk 7y ago
  I’m the opposite. An American living abroad. US targeted ads still are applicable to me. I can understand why someone might want to disable this feature, but it’s not a scam by any means.
  - jfoster 7y ago
    > US targeted ads still are applicable to me. Not necessarily applicable to the advertiser, though. If there's a US restaurant chain hoping for regular customers, they would be wasting their ad spend if you're on the receiving end of the ads.
ilamont 7y ago
That's the Google AdWords way ... by default, include people "interested in" the United States with no end date. So, lots of junk clicks at high CPCs from India, former Soviet Republics, and other places where the local language may not even be English. Turning these settings off requires drilling down into some obscure Google Ads interface ... it used to be AdWords Dimensions > Geographic, but not sure what it is now. If you call them on it, the Google phone reps will say with a straight face, “Let's say people with family in Moldova want to look for something to tell their relatives in the U.S.” The ethical way for Google to handle this would be to make all U.S. campaigns by default target users in the U.S., Indian campaigns target users in India, Moldovan campaigns target users in Moldova, etc. If businesses want to expand their campaigns to people living in other countries for whatever reason, give them the option but don't make it the default. I feel especially sorry for the local small business owners trying to counter the SEO garbage and Yelp reviews that clutter the results. They try to set up the campaigns trusting Google's guidance, and they're lucky if 10% of clicks end up being target customers living in the same area. Often they have no clue about what's going on, and wonder why their campaigns are costing so much for only a trickle of real customers.
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  I had to do this for my midwestern US shed manufacturing business. Since we deliver up to 350 miles away, I set the geographic target to a radius around my business location. Seemed to eliminate most of the junk clicks.
quickthrower2 7y ago
Well... some people based in the US travel outside of the US sometimes.
unreal37 7y ago
I'm surprised that you're surprised. You worked for Google. You should have known this before today.
- pheug 7y ago
  Why exactly should he have known this, especially as an SWE? Google is a gigantic 110k+ people company by now. It's totally possibly to spend years head deep in code specializing on some obscure parts of codebase with near zero understanding how everything else works outside of your narrow area of focus.
  - tobltobs 7y ago
    He has been working for two years in the AdWords team. Sure it is possible to work somewhere for two years and don't get even an basic understanding of the product, but it is unsurprising if somebody would call that surprising.
JCharante 7y ago
I mean it says right there that they may also be people regularly in the US. I don't see why I'm less of a marketable audience for a SaaS when I'm abroad.
- bitcoinbutter 7y ago
  The problem is, it also includes anyone who has ever logged into a US VPN. There is no doubt that this will catch some Americans who are abroad, but if you are getting 3-4 non-US clicks to get 1 American abroad click, you are effectively paying 4-5x for that one useful click.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    So is everyone else, so in theory the auctioned price per click should be less to compensate. People don’t pay for clicks, they pay for results. Clicks are an intermediate measure. If I make $100 from $50 spend via 1000 or 100 clicks it’s pretty much the same thing.
- trilliumbaker 7y ago
  I manage campaigns for a local, independent contractor. The business runs ads with a meager budget, <$500 a month. At the same time, clicks average around $5. The conversion rate hovers around 15% for those within the service area. That's a cost per conversion of ~$30. For those who are outside of the service area it's less than <1%. While it may only receive a handful of clicks from outside the area a month, it eats into the already minuscule budget for the long shot of a person who decides to look up the service while on vacation or visiting relatives. It's not efficient ad spend for a business like this. A SaaS business is a different case, but this issue is persistent and getting worse.
deleted 7y ago
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spencey 7y ago
OP, how did you track location? If it's IP address then it could be someone in the US using a VPN. If I'm on T-mobile my IP says I'm in Seattle so DFP will show me ads for Seattle but I'm in SF.
paul7986 7y ago
Just watched this vidoe re: other adword shenigans where Tulsi Gabbard discusses her suit against Google with Joe Rogan. They suspended her ads and adwords account during the first democratic debate & never provided a reason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5o-zqII6eQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5o-zqII6eQ
Simon_says 7y ago
I'm really skeptical of the narrative that Alphabet et. al. have brilliant, super-precise targeting of ads. I'm an American who only speaks English, but I'm currently living in a non-English-speaking country. Youtube constantly serves me videos in a language I don't understand. Mostly, I don't even understand what product is trying to be sold to me, and for the minority where the product is clear, I don't understand the arguments, and I'll never buy these things, anyways. I've never watched a non-English video or ever interacted with the non-English speaking web. How on Earth can Alphabet screw up so much? The only thing I can fathom is that Alphabet is optimizing for getting more advertising revenue, long-term effectiveness of their ads be damned.
- csa 7y ago
  Maybe optimizing their ad impressions for folks like you doesn’t justify the engineering costs to implement it. I’m not sure where you are, but I imagine that folks like you are a very tiny percentage of the market.
izacus 7y ago
So HN wants Google not to track prople but still exactly and completely accurately know the location of each and every one of them for Ad targeting? That sounds incompatible.
- ifdefdebug 7y ago
  What about just not serving the ad to an IP in Turkey without even looking at the person using it?
  - pas 7y ago
    How reliable is IP geolocating nowadays?
    - nl 7y ago
      It's pretty reliable outside some known bad blocks.
asadkn 7y ago
Never rely on Google Ads to be honest. They are unlikely to respond at all. After spending ~100k, our ads randomly stopped working last month without changing anything. Support took 10 days to reply saying the account was up for a review (no notifications sent, no indicators). Yet, it still wasn't working. Booked a consultation with one of their so-called "Experts", he couldn't find anything wrong and suggested to contact support again. After the initial 10 days response, still waiting for a reply from so-called support 20 days later. I'd assume support only exists for companies that spend millions a year.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  Is it possible that your experience is an outlier, and not generalizable as advice?
  - asadkn 7y ago
    I have read similar stories all over the community in general. The support simply doesn't exist or takes 2 weeks for a simple, useless response, generally. Given your vested interest in Ads and Google in specific, I am sure you know this already.
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
      What percentage of serious inquiries are responded to outside the SLA? What percentage of those fail to resolve the user's problem? Without that kind of information, reading stories after having a bad experience will turn your brain into a petri dish for confirmation bias.
      - asadkn 7y ago
        Ignoring the red herring, and the assumption I read these stories after a bad experience, let me address, yet, as a consumer, all that matters is the vocal user experience. If there are 100 bad stories out there, that's enough of a failure of a company irrelevant of its size. And I have personally conducted the support experiment multiple time over the years to have the first-hand experience. Either way, since you clearly have a vested interest in Ad companies from your HN comment history, I shall engage no more.
tomaszs 7y ago
Google changed it lately without any special notification. Unfortunately. There are more things to watch out. For example if you set a budget of 100 dollars per day, Google can, and most likely, will, spend 200 dollars in short campaign per day. Another thing: in display campaign, on default, most of the budget will be drained by mobile fraud applications that generate fake clicks. And also by video clicks made by babies on YouTube. And Google removed an option to disable mobile apps altogether lately. Keyword targeting - on default Google uses broad matching including variants etc. Eventually you can pay for clicks for non relevant keywords that will also drain most of the budget. Another thing: Google advises to put ads on your company name. It is a neat strategy, because you pay for something you had for free. And campaign seems to have better statistics. Another thing. You wont believe it, untill you see it. Aprox up to 80% of ad traffic are bots. And advertising platforms does not recognize it or refund. And so on... I am working on Google Ads campaigns for several years now. Always say to my client two things: 1) Google and Facebook will spent every penny you want to spend 2) Spend on ads only such amount on money, you can live without, and keep it running for a longer time without interruption. 3) Optimise often
- buboard 7y ago
  > And Google removed an option to disable mobile apps altogether lately. can you adjust bid to -100% for mobile?
  - tomaszs 7y ago
    It excludes websites. And nowadays you dont want to block ads on websites viewed on mobile devices. You want to block Android ad fraud apps. Google blocked the possibility to do it. Essencially making fraud apps creators extremely easy and luxurious. And as you can expect, Google has 10 times stricter requirements for websites showing their ads, than for Android apps...
  - riku_iki 7y ago
    Minimum modifier is -90%, so you only can penalize mobile.
- artur_makly 7y ago
moomin 7y ago
Gotta wonder if there’s a point where people just stop paying for this nonsense.
emn13 7y ago
I mean, this all sounds sort of like a reasonable complaint... until you get to the sample size: 3 clicks. It appears arguably reasonable that geotargeting isn't exact, nor is it clear that these clicks weren't actually real and valuable. If he's trying to make the point that the trend is disturbing, well, then: make that point with something akin to a real sample (at least 1000 clicks, spread over more than a week?)
stevespang 7y ago
"For example if you set a budget of 100 dollars per day, Google can, and most likely, will, spend 200 dollars in short campaign per day." This is the EXACT reason years ago I only gave Google multiple prepaid credit cards over the years with a $200 limit because I KNEW they couldn't be trusted. When they started notifying me they would not accept prepaids anymore I abandoned my ad word account - - and fortunately my rank is the same as it was on 1st page since I'm in a nitch business
james_impliu 7y ago
I recently created ad campaigns on Twitter/Facebook and Google for our startup. The dark patterns like this were shocking. They really taste of short term metric driven growth that doesn't consider "now I'm paying for clicks that will never convert, I'm going to churn as an account totally". For example, Adwords defaults into advertising on every device which now includes TVs. This channel would never work for our business (an app that integrates with GitHub), and I'm sure this would work badly for many other businesses. We only found it by digging into the campaign stats once it had launched. It also strikes me how long the approval takes for new ads - 48 hours. How many advertisers drop off in that time? That feels like a real value add thing to focus on.
GordonS 7y ago
A bit OT, but does anyone have any advice on improving page relevancy quality scores? My site is focused only on relevant content in a particular infosec niche, and is well written - yet quality scores across the site are 2-4, and have been for the entire site history, which spans almost 20 years. Which means we pay more for ads. I've been through the usual guides, and I can't find anything actionable - they all basically boil down to "have relevant content" - but I do, dammit! I've also taken up Google's frequent offers of free help from an expert on 2 occasions. Both times all they did was try to get me to increase my spend (e.g. enabling the search network etc), and parroted about "writing relevant content", even though both agreed that the content seemed very relevant to them. The site has been rewritten from scratch a couple of times over the years - no change. I even paid a copywriter a couple of years back, but the tweaked content still resulted in the same 2-4 quality scores. I'm considering switching to a different domain, closing the AdWords account and opening a new one, but I've no idea if that would actually change anything.
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  I would try several different approaches in your content. Don't get hung up on what you think is relevant -- what matters is what google thinks is relevant. Since they don't tell you precisely, try a few different variations -- going for maximum diversity, since you're in a search optimization grid like the board game Battleship. You need to try things that are as different as possible. Don't rewrite it -- explicitly take different approaches with the goal of making them very different from each other. Then run an experiment.

419 points by siggi 7y ago

Sounds like excluding all other countries is the only solution. Google does provide a CSV with all the AdWords recognized countries: https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/geotargeting https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/geot... You should be able to copy the list to the clipboard and paste into the exclusion list.

janesvilleseo 7y ago
This is the answer. I can’t tell you the times I have had to tell clients and other search marketing professionals that they need to have a negative list. Budgets are not infinite and they need to be managed to get the most out of them.
- dwd 7y ago
  I've mentioned this previously as a dark pattern that trips most people up. It's probably fair to assume setting a target location is it, not that you additionally have to exclude the rest of the world. And it's buried in the advanced settings, so anyone looking for a quick default setup just do the minimum required setting presented to them.

ben_jones 7y ago

I wonder how google handles vpn users, particularly in countries where vpns are fairly ubiquitous like China or even Iran. If someone in Turkey is clearly identified as a Turkish user despite having a vpn in the United States, I shouldn’t be charged for them right?

muratsu 7y ago
You might be technically right but Google is incentivized to charge you. Also, it's probably really hard (technically) to resolve your real identity.
- SXX 7y ago
  It is super simple for Google to resolve real identify of most of users and fraudsters. At least there absolutely no justification for Google not to detect fraud in cases where OP could do it using his own statistics. Your browser by default leak your OS version (Chinese using older versions very often), locale (of course there is tons of users with Thai or Turkish locale outside of their home country, right?), fonts, etc, etc. Basically everything is can be used and actually actively used for fingerprinting. In cases of some proxies WebRTC can just leak your real IP. I wont even start on the fact that Google controls web browser that is used by 50% internet users and it's sent a lot of data to the mothership. And yeah if you try to mess with Google itself by let's say mass registering accounts you'll understand how good they are at protecting their own infrastructure and money. At the same time why should they care about someone else lost money? So they don try to fix it.

deleted 7y ago

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wolco 7y ago

The wording makes targetting useless. But other questions came up. Why do so many quit google after less than five years? How does a company who's product is a push notification when someone clicks get funding?

kevinventullo 7y ago
> Why do so many quit google after less than five years? Usually initial stock grants are for four years. If the price goes up enough and then relatively flattens out, it can happen that one’s total compensation begins decreasing after the fourth year. That, and 4-5 years is enough time to build a sufficiently large safety net that one can attempt to strike out on one’s own.
unreal37 7y ago
Did he get funding? Or he's just unemployed working on an app?

tehwebguy 7y ago

Google bundles bad clicks like a pile of stinking, rotten subprime mortgages and then peppers them with some good clicks and sells them to you like JP Morgan in 2005. Did you read the fine print? Doesn’t matter, you can’t redline it anyway so it’s take it or leave it.

benologist 7y ago
Their whole ad empire is desperate for a massive audit. Google had to be sued to deliver a $400,000 refund they owed but later claimed couldn't be delivered, claiming 3rd parties had been paid the funds when it was their own platforms. It turned out Google had accidentally kept $75 million. https://marketingland.com/class-action-lawsuit-accuses-google-of-improperly-withholding-refunds-for-ad-fraud-261219 https://marketingland.com/class-action-lawsuit-accuses-googl...
- echelon 7y ago
  As someone who has adblocked everything since my teenage years, the whole ad industry seems to be making orders of magnitude more money than it should. I just don't understand how anyone comes to buy things shown in ads. Are ads really effective? I don't buy advertised products. Do we really trust ad tech accounting? They've been caught inflating numbers over and over again. The whole house of cards seems like it could fall over if actually investigated. Google, Facebook, Twitter - every single one of them. Influencer and direct social referral advertising seem much more "legitimate" than injected ad impressions. How can we get the thing to implode? Google has destroyed the web to prop up its ad business. I'd be happy if they couldn't cause any more trouble.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
    I think most marketers are aware that a lot (maybe half) of clicks are bots/fraud. At the end of the day, if your ROAS is good, you don't care that much.
  - cbsks 7y ago
    If Google’s ad business dries up, what do you think they will pivot to? It scares me to think about what a desperate company with that much data would do.

appleiigs 7y ago

If I am in Turkey and I google “chicken USA”, I should get shown chicken ads from the USA. And when I click, those chicken producers should pay.

rtpg 7y ago
If you hired an ad agency to run radio commercials in Texas and then get a bill saying "oh by the way we found cheap ad space in Tokyo so ran some there too, here's the bill", you'd probably question your relationship with them. I understand it's not the same thing, but it sure smells the same
- appleiigs 7y ago
  The blog author didn't read the docs. He signed up for a relationship and just assumed it would be different and now he's complaining about it. As I mentioned in another comment: From Google AdWords help docs it says "By default, location targeting includes both physical locations and locations of interest".
tertius 7y ago
Only if the advertisers choose to have their ads served to you. They don't owe you ads.
tyingq 7y ago
It seems logical that the chance of you buying their chicken is much lower than someone actually in the US. Why should they pay?
- muratsu 7y ago
  My guess would be that you're making the assumption that I'm looking to buy chicken. It might be the case that someone is just researching "US chicken market"?
  - baddox 7y ago
    And why would most chicken ad publishers want to show ads to those people? I imagine most of those publishers are selling chicken, not information about the US chicken market.

cpsempek 7y ago

This type of behavior allows for a known ad arbitrage strategy. Bing’s PPC network, for instance, use to not have the same geo coverage as AdWords, and when they received traffic from a geo they weren’t serving ads in they would send the search to their US ad network. The strategy then is 1. Buy AdWords ads in countries out of Bing’s coverage, 2. Send these clicks to a page serving your Bing feed’s ads for same/similar keyword search, 3. Realize Bing US CPCs on international AdWords ad buys

csomar 7y ago
But how much is your conversion rate for the transferred users. It is not like it is 100%. If it is 5%, you'll need x20 times the CPC to break-even.
- huac 7y ago
  no, because the Google ads would be served in low CPM countries (eg Turkey) whilst the Bing ads would be served as if the user was from the US (high CPM).
- cpsempek 7y ago
  Of course, CTR is apart of the profit formula and cannot ignored as you correctly note. It’s not a trivial task to find those verticals or geos where this will be a successful strategy.

deleted 7y ago

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nartz 7y ago

This is completely deceptive, especially showing them as from the US!!! I imagine 90% of AdWords users are not aware of this. Thank you for writing this!

ifthenelseend 7y ago

Google is a scam company. Stop using it.

dang 7y ago
Would you please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? We've already had to ask you about this, and we ban accounts that keep doing it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Akababa 7y ago

Is it possible that they've detected someone using a proxy and traced them back to the US?

zaroth 7y ago
Not even remotely.

JeremyMorgan 7y ago

So glad I'm not involved in PPC anymore. We used to catch junk clicks all the time, from many different countries. One company I worked with was local and wanted very targeted local clicks. Nothing I could do could stop clicks from other states and countries, which were useless to them. Don't get me started about Twitter advertsing. Want some followers for your business? Twitter will gladly send you tons of obviously fake profiles as soon as you get too many impressions without a click. Like profiles without real pictures and timelines consisting only of retweets. You have to tolerate an accepted amount of cruft with any PPC campaign.

trilliumbaker 7y ago
The cruft is getting worse as Google takes away control from managers and turns it over to AI. It's like how exact match no longer means exact match.
- treebornfrog 7y ago
  This. And in addition they no longer show average position metric (1) which increases barrier to entry, they now only show impression share. (1) https://www.practicalecommerce.com/say-goodbye-to-average-position-metric-in-google-ads https://www.practicalecommerce.com/say-goodbye-to-average-po...

stinkycatfart 7y ago

Being a SWE on Ads gave him an inclination to use Google products?! Honestly I think this highlights how divorced eng is from real world usage, otherwise he'd know this shit happens. every.damn.day. ad tech is a house of cards and makes me reconsider working at Google every day.

temp20160423 7y ago
You work on ads at Google and feel that ad tech is a house of cards? I actually disagree, primarily because of the auction. It's an incredibly clever way to ensure Google's incentives are aligned with the advertisers'. Assuming rational bidders, Google can only charge more per click if the clicks deliver more value to the advertisers. If Google just sends a bunch of garbage clicks to the advertisers, they will just lower their bids.

oceliker 7y ago

I'm somewhat confused here. I live in the US but regularly visit Turkey to see family (say, once a year). I also regularly Google things related to the US when I'm there. Clicks outside the US are not necessarily meaningless -- the screenshot in the article shows that they are targeting people "regularly in the US". Just because I left for a couple of weeks does not mean I abandoned everything related to where I live. There's still value in targeting US ads to me, independent of my current location.

soraminazuki 7y ago
The default option says that it targets "people in, or show interest in , your targeted location." The author tightened the settings only after he realized the clicks came from outside the US. Also, it's unnatural that multiple clicks from the same location were made in a quick succession.
- WillPostForFood 7y ago
  The author tightened the settings only after he realized the clicks came from outside the US It is worse than that, the country targeting setting was already at maximum tightness. This is a very bad dark pattern by Google, there is no setting to strictly target a country. https://miro.medium.com/max/1048/1*5I7qjuarkWtiNltBdR1Quw.png https://miro.medium.com/max/1048/1*5I7qjuarkWtiNltBdR1Quw.pn...
jasonlfunk 7y ago
I’m the opposite. An American living abroad. US targeted ads still are applicable to me. I can understand why someone might want to disable this feature, but it’s not a scam by any means.
- jfoster 7y ago
  > US targeted ads still are applicable to me. Not necessarily applicable to the advertiser, though. If there's a US restaurant chain hoping for regular customers, they would be wasting their ad spend if you're on the receiving end of the ads.

ilamont 7y ago

That's the Google AdWords way ... by default, include people "interested in" the United States with no end date. So, lots of junk clicks at high CPCs from India, former Soviet Republics, and other places where the local language may not even be English. Turning these settings off requires drilling down into some obscure Google Ads interface ... it used to be AdWords Dimensions > Geographic, but not sure what it is now. If you call them on it, the Google phone reps will say with a straight face, “Let's say people with family in Moldova want to look for something to tell their relatives in the U.S.” The ethical way for Google to handle this would be to make all U.S. campaigns by default target users in the U.S., Indian campaigns target users in India, Moldovan campaigns target users in Moldova, etc. If businesses want to expand their campaigns to people living in other countries for whatever reason, give them the option but don't make it the default. I feel especially sorry for the local small business owners trying to counter the SEO garbage and Yelp reviews that clutter the results. They try to set up the campaigns trusting Google's guidance, and they're lucky if 10% of clicks end up being target customers living in the same area. Often they have no clue about what's going on, and wonder why their campaigns are costing so much for only a trickle of real customers.

Fjolsvith 7y ago
I had to do this for my midwestern US shed manufacturing business. Since we deliver up to 350 miles away, I set the geographic target to a radius around my business location. Seemed to eliminate most of the junk clicks.

quickthrower2 7y ago

Well... some people based in the US travel outside of the US sometimes.

unreal37 7y ago

I'm surprised that you're surprised. You worked for Google. You should have known this before today.

pheug 7y ago
Why exactly should he have known this, especially as an SWE? Google is a gigantic 110k+ people company by now. It's totally possibly to spend years head deep in code specializing on some obscure parts of codebase with near zero understanding how everything else works outside of your narrow area of focus.
- tobltobs 7y ago
  He has been working for two years in the AdWords team. Sure it is possible to work somewhere for two years and don't get even an basic understanding of the product, but it is unsurprising if somebody would call that surprising.

JCharante 7y ago

I mean it says right there that they may also be people regularly in the US. I don't see why I'm less of a marketable audience for a SaaS when I'm abroad.

bitcoinbutter 7y ago
The problem is, it also includes anyone who has ever logged into a US VPN. There is no doubt that this will catch some Americans who are abroad, but if you are getting 3-4 non-US clicks to get 1 American abroad click, you are effectively paying 4-5x for that one useful click.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  So is everyone else, so in theory the auctioned price per click should be less to compensate. People don’t pay for clicks, they pay for results. Clicks are an intermediate measure. If I make $100 from $50 spend via 1000 or 100 clicks it’s pretty much the same thing.
trilliumbaker 7y ago
I manage campaigns for a local, independent contractor. The business runs ads with a meager budget, <$500 a month. At the same time, clicks average around $5. The conversion rate hovers around 15% for those within the service area. That's a cost per conversion of ~$30. For those who are outside of the service area it's less than <1%. While it may only receive a handful of clicks from outside the area a month, it eats into the already minuscule budget for the long shot of a person who decides to look up the service while on vacation or visiting relatives. It's not efficient ad spend for a business like this. A SaaS business is a different case, but this issue is persistent and getting worse.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

spencey 7y ago

OP, how did you track location? If it's IP address then it could be someone in the US using a VPN. If I'm on T-mobile my IP says I'm in Seattle so DFP will show me ads for Seattle but I'm in SF.

paul7986 7y ago

Just watched this vidoe re: other adword shenigans where Tulsi Gabbard discusses her suit against Google with Joe Rogan. They suspended her ads and adwords account during the first democratic debate & never provided a reason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5o-zqII6eQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5o-zqII6eQ

Simon_says 7y ago

I'm really skeptical of the narrative that Alphabet et. al. have brilliant, super-precise targeting of ads. I'm an American who only speaks English, but I'm currently living in a non-English-speaking country. Youtube constantly serves me videos in a language I don't understand. Mostly, I don't even understand what product is trying to be sold to me, and for the minority where the product is clear, I don't understand the arguments, and I'll never buy these things, anyways. I've never watched a non-English video or ever interacted with the non-English speaking web. How on Earth can Alphabet screw up so much? The only thing I can fathom is that Alphabet is optimizing for getting more advertising revenue, long-term effectiveness of their ads be damned.

csa 7y ago
Maybe optimizing their ad impressions for folks like you doesn’t justify the engineering costs to implement it. I’m not sure where you are, but I imagine that folks like you are a very tiny percentage of the market.

izacus 7y ago

So HN wants Google not to track prople but still exactly and completely accurately know the location of each and every one of them for Ad targeting? That sounds incompatible.

ifdefdebug 7y ago
What about just not serving the ad to an IP in Turkey without even looking at the person using it?
- pas 7y ago
  How reliable is IP geolocating nowadays?
  - nl 7y ago
    It's pretty reliable outside some known bad blocks.

asadkn 7y ago

Never rely on Google Ads to be honest. They are unlikely to respond at all. After spending ~100k, our ads randomly stopped working last month without changing anything. Support took 10 days to reply saying the account was up for a review (no notifications sent, no indicators). Yet, it still wasn't working. Booked a consultation with one of their so-called "Experts", he couldn't find anything wrong and suggested to contact support again. After the initial 10 days response, still waiting for a reply from so-called support 20 days later. I'd assume support only exists for companies that spend millions a year.

edmundsauto 7y ago
Is it possible that your experience is an outlier, and not generalizable as advice?
- asadkn 7y ago
  I have read similar stories all over the community in general. The support simply doesn't exist or takes 2 weeks for a simple, useless response, generally. Given your vested interest in Ads and Google in specific, I am sure you know this already.
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    What percentage of serious inquiries are responded to outside the SLA? What percentage of those fail to resolve the user's problem? Without that kind of information, reading stories after having a bad experience will turn your brain into a petri dish for confirmation bias.
    - asadkn 7y ago
      Ignoring the red herring, and the assumption I read these stories after a bad experience, let me address, yet, as a consumer, all that matters is the vocal user experience. If there are 100 bad stories out there, that's enough of a failure of a company irrelevant of its size. And I have personally conducted the support experiment multiple time over the years to have the first-hand experience. Either way, since you clearly have a vested interest in Ad companies from your HN comment history, I shall engage no more.

tomaszs 7y ago

Google changed it lately without any special notification. Unfortunately. There are more things to watch out. For example if you set a budget of 100 dollars per day, Google can, and most likely, will, spend 200 dollars in short campaign per day. Another thing: in display campaign, on default, most of the budget will be drained by mobile fraud applications that generate fake clicks. And also by video clicks made by babies on YouTube. And Google removed an option to disable mobile apps altogether lately. Keyword targeting - on default Google uses broad matching including variants etc. Eventually you can pay for clicks for non relevant keywords that will also drain most of the budget. Another thing: Google advises to put ads on your company name. It is a neat strategy, because you pay for something you had for free. And campaign seems to have better statistics. Another thing. You wont believe it, untill you see it. Aprox up to 80% of ad traffic are bots. And advertising platforms does not recognize it or refund. And so on... I am working on Google Ads campaigns for several years now. Always say to my client two things: 1) Google and Facebook will spent every penny you want to spend 2) Spend on ads only such amount on money, you can live without, and keep it running for a longer time without interruption. 3) Optimise often

buboard 7y ago
> And Google removed an option to disable mobile apps altogether lately. can you adjust bid to -100% for mobile?
- tomaszs 7y ago
  It excludes websites. And nowadays you dont want to block ads on websites viewed on mobile devices. You want to block Android ad fraud apps. Google blocked the possibility to do it. Essencially making fraud apps creators extremely easy and luxurious. And as you can expect, Google has 10 times stricter requirements for websites showing their ads, than for Android apps...
- riku_iki 7y ago
  Minimum modifier is -90%, so you only can penalize mobile.
artur_makly 7y ago

moomin 7y ago

Gotta wonder if there’s a point where people just stop paying for this nonsense.

emn13 7y ago

I mean, this all sounds sort of like a reasonable complaint... until you get to the sample size: 3 clicks. It appears arguably reasonable that geotargeting isn't exact, nor is it clear that these clicks weren't actually real and valuable. If he's trying to make the point that the trend is disturbing, well, then: make that point with something akin to a real sample (at least 1000 clicks, spread over more than a week?)

stevespang 7y ago

"For example if you set a budget of 100 dollars per day, Google can, and most likely, will, spend 200 dollars in short campaign per day." This is the EXACT reason years ago I only gave Google multiple prepaid credit cards over the years with a $200 limit because I KNEW they couldn't be trusted. When they started notifying me they would not accept prepaids anymore I abandoned my ad word account - - and fortunately my rank is the same as it was on 1st page since I'm in a nitch business

james_impliu 7y ago

I recently created ad campaigns on Twitter/Facebook and Google for our startup. The dark patterns like this were shocking. They really taste of short term metric driven growth that doesn't consider "now I'm paying for clicks that will never convert, I'm going to churn as an account totally". For example, Adwords defaults into advertising on every device which now includes TVs. This channel would never work for our business (an app that integrates with GitHub), and I'm sure this would work badly for many other businesses. We only found it by digging into the campaign stats once it had launched. It also strikes me how long the approval takes for new ads - 48 hours. How many advertisers drop off in that time? That feels like a real value add thing to focus on.

GordonS 7y ago

A bit OT, but does anyone have any advice on improving page relevancy quality scores? My site is focused only on relevant content in a particular infosec niche, and is well written - yet quality scores across the site are 2-4, and have been for the entire site history, which spans almost 20 years. Which means we pay more for ads. I've been through the usual guides, and I can't find anything actionable - they all basically boil down to "have relevant content" - but I do, dammit! I've also taken up Google's frequent offers of free help from an expert on 2 occasions. Both times all they did was try to get me to increase my spend (e.g. enabling the search network etc), and parroted about "writing relevant content", even though both agreed that the content seemed very relevant to them. The site has been rewritten from scratch a couple of times over the years - no change. I even paid a copywriter a couple of years back, but the tweaked content still resulted in the same 2-4 quality scores. I'm considering switching to a different domain, closing the AdWords account and opening a new one, but I've no idea if that would actually change anything.

edmundsauto 7y ago
I would try several different approaches in your content. Don't get hung up on what you think is relevant -- what matters is what google thinks is relevant. Since they don't tell you precisely, try a few different variations -- going for maximum diversity, since you're in a search optimization grid like the board game Battleship. You need to try things that are as different as possible. Don't rewrite it -- explicitly take different approaches with the goal of making them very different from each other. Then run an experiment.