Well I can tell you which one hurts more; the click.
I wish I had read this or this before buying tens of thousands of clicks from them.
Here’s what happened. I signed up for advertising on Citysearch, and a few weeks into it, I got a call from my account manager asking if we’d like to sign up for expanded reach. He explained that Citysearch would buy traffic from search engines, and direct it to our listing on Citysearch.
Fine. Keyword arbitrage. We pay lots of affiliates to do that because it increases reach, and still ends in a nice, happy, profitable situation. So, since I was dealing with a big reputable company, that was good enough for me.
Unfortunately, after some time, it became clear that Citysearch was not above the likes of MIVA, or Enhance (as we’ll discuss later) when it comes to click quality. According to Omniture, they started sending us a lot of of “clicks” from dubious sources:
searchhound.com
alluc.org
contextuads.com
fanfiction.net
whosgot.net
addictinggames.com
addynamix.com
clickshield.net
hallpass.com
projectplaylist.com
musicjesus.com
layoutsduh.com
searcherslave.com
ebaumsworld.com
etc, etc, etc.
Now I bet I know exactly what you’re thinking, “But searchhound.com is recognized for its quality traffic and search results.” ( 
Haha!) Well, maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t matter if the keywords have nothing to do with your business. We had “prospects” that had come from keyword gems like “jerk chicken wing nutritional value”, “verify java install”, and “dragonballz shin budokai”. If you’re wondering, recipes, tech help, and anime have nothing in common with flooring (or each other for that matter).
As if that were not bad enough, Citysearch also decided to syndicate to a bunch of slimy networks: Fastclick, Contextuads, Ad Dynamix, AdBrite, etc, etc, etc. They used these networks to deliver (Surprise!) lots more worthless (but local) clicks.
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This is an ad for iFLOOR.com via Citysearch via Contextuads. The design just adds insult to injury. |
It turns out that more than 80% of visitors never made it to page two, a classic sign of click fraud. Don’t worry, it gets worse. If you take out any visits from CitySearch.com, the only potentially legitimate source of traffic, that number goes up to 86%. Oh, you think I’m done? I’m afraid not. Of the remaining traffic that viewed two pages (about 5.6%), 80% of page views came from reloads. Seems like a fairly robotic thing to do. So, for those of you keeping track at home, that means I’ve ruled out 91% of visitors as being potential prospects.
Needless to say, there were no conversions.
Well, even after reading this page, I still think it’s click fraud– at least according to my definition, and my interpretation of Omniture data.
Rest easy Citysearch, for even now my words are building the tide of advertisers that will rise up like a tsunami, and deliver justice on a scale never before witnessed. Or maybe just some flood damage.