“Dont be Evil” but intentionally deceptive is ok
Had an issue with Google today that pissed me off so much, I decided to blog about it so that others can avoid the problem.
Basically we had a server issue this morning and while everything was being sorted out, we went to all of our PPC campaigns and paused the traffic so we were not paying for clicks that were gonna go nowhere. Google makes this very easy, you can click the little white button under pause on the summary page which selects all of your campaigns and then click on pause and it is basically a quick way to pause lots of campaigns.
Once the problem was fixed we reversed the process by clicking the white button and clicking on resume, quick 30 second restart to the account.
About an hour later, one of my analysts noticed that an ad campaign that we had not run traffic to in over 2.5 years was getting clicks. We then saw that half a dozen or more of our Deleted campaigns had somehow received clicks and impressions - one campaign at almost $10 per click. To make it worse, our tracking link scheme had changed and all of these clicks were either going to dead pages or to websites we dont even own or have relationships with anymore.
We quickly paused all of these campaigns and sent a note to our Google reps letting them know about the problem with their system and asking for a credit for the $3200 or so in clicks we got on these deleted campaigns due to their system error.
A few hours later, we got a nicely worded note that said in the event of “user error” Google would offer us a one time credit of half of the problem.
Hold on a second - User Error? From the campaign summary screen the status of each of these campaigns reads in big red letters as it did before, during and after the issue - DELETED, from the ad group summary screen each adgroup had a status of “Ad Group Deleted” once again in red letters, and from the individual adgroup pages, right next to the ad box, it once again said Deleted in red letters. So on three screens I see prominently displayed in red a notice that the campaign, adgroup and ad are all deleted. I am very definetly not seeing user error here.
Google explained that since I had selected all campaigns and hit resume that they interpreted the request to apply to all ads in the entire account regardless of campaign, adgroup or ad status.
Quick aside on Webster’s dictionary definitions of certain words -
Deleted : to eliminate especially by blotting out, cutting out, or erasing
Resume: to return to or begin again after interruption
The first word clearly implies permanent, the second clearly implies restarting after a break (which could also be considered to be a pause).
Google does not allow users to actually DELETE a campaign, despite flagging campaigns as such, in fact for their purposes there is little real difference between Delete and Pause.
The money means almost nothing, it was a tiny fraction of my spend with them today and will hardly affect my profits at all. The principle on the other hand means quite a bit.
Here is a company that holds itself out as holier than thou, yet at every turn seems to be willing to compromise its principles, which is a big part of the reason most advertisers I know are rooting for Yahoo, or Facebook, or Microsoft or pretty much anyone to actually compete with Google. They are a monopoly and act like one frequently.
In closing (and the reason for the post in the first place - other than to vent some frustration), how can you prevent this from happening to you?
First off find all the deleted campaigns or adgroups in your account, then go and change the maximum bid to $.01. That way if you accidentally resume something you have deleted you will probably get very few impressions or clicks.
Pretty easy actually but it should not be required.
They basically tricked us out of $3200 from in a few hours and who knows how much from others over time, by being intentionally deceptive about the function that is pretty universally understood to not mean temporarily. When was the last time you thought, I ought to hold on to this item in case I need it again, I will just delete it.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:33 am
That’s pretty evil. Thanks for the warning.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Diorex, long time reader and big fan…
We had a similar issue - but our spend slipped through the cracks for many months, it was a significant dollar amount. We fought the “half credit” and won but like you said, it’s the principle that matters. Good looking out.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I’ve had some screwy things happen to my paused / resumed campaigns too, mostly having to do with sluggish impressions once I resumed.
Now whenever I need to pause a campaign I just lower the daily budget to $1 instead rather than risk the wild cards that pausing can introduce.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:30 pm
cheeky bastards, the sheer quantity of £ they make from adwords without fixing this is, which I see basically as a bug.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:23 am
Its a big monopoly, like Microsoft was/is, it will be tamed, no worries.
March 24th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I’d love to join the rant with you guys but i kinda have to side with Google on this one. Anyone that uses AdWords on a regular basis knows that nothing in the account ever gets deleted. Including the deleting the entire account.
Yeah, its kinda weird how deleting stuff doesn’t actually delete it, but its something I feel any experienced AdWords manager should have realized.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
You were asking about Twitter, and what it’s good for. Notice the Sphinn traffic to this post? Partly a function of Twitter traction :).
@Bryan - genius workaround!
March 28th, 2009 at 11:08 am
[...] Goldberg summarized the story, saying: Google AdWords ripped off this firm for $3200! When they restarted paused campaigns by [...]
March 30th, 2009 at 1:01 am
[...] Goldberg summarized the story, saying: Google AdWords ripped off this firm for $3200! When they restarted paused campaigns by [...]
March 30th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Many years ago I reported a credit card stolen to the card company. About two months later, a flood of charges went through on the card I had reported stolen and I got a bill for them. I called the card company and they said “Oh, we know that you reported it stolen but when we saw the charges start again we thought you had just lost the card.”
I said, “um, what part of I REPORTED IT STOLEN did you not understand?” and contested the charges. To their credit, I lost a little time in providing documentation and making phone calls but did not end up out of pocket for any of the fraudulent charges.
Still, it was really annoying that this company would assume that I didn’t really mean it when I said something was stolen. Kind of like now when Google decided that DELETED does not really mean what it is supposed to mean.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
It is unfortunate to hear that you would recieve that kind of response from any company. I had similar problems with a telco recently where they fell back on the user error kind of comment. Many big companies lose touch with their customers as they grow, falling back on process-driven scripts instead of common sense.
John
http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com
March 30th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Interesting - this story sounds similar (yet different) to what Enron did years ago to the electricity grids, causing the rolling blackouts and forcing billing rates up. It seems to me google would be WELL AWARE of the fact that a resume all would cause billing on all ad campaigns that they had not actually deleted. hence why they only offer half of the amount in credit. Their analysts probably have it all figured out and i’ll bet half of all of the accidental resume campaigns is allot of money. Shame on you google.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
All monopolies end up the same: mistreating others. It’s nothing personal: it’s how they are.
I love Google and use it daily but the Monopoly Rule must always be borne in mind.
I’m afraid regulators may have to break it up.
Not to mention the fact that we cannot afford to have yet another org that is “too big to fail”
March 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Well… if there are no bugs, the users will find them!…
Too bad you had to pay for something you should have been paid for!
March 31st, 2009 at 12:57 am
What campaign were you running where you were charged $10 per click?
March 31st, 2009 at 3:11 am
[...] ads they don’t want to buy. But Google doesn’t refund all the money wasted this way. Bad Google. Share: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web [...]
March 31st, 2009 at 8:53 am
Very interesting experience… good tip for everyone to double check their accounts and make sure they are set for least amount of damage.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:10 am
I would have to take Google’s side on this. The deleted campaigns are clearly mentioned and as somebody said above when you are selecting all campaigns and clicking ‘Resume’ it means you want to resume all your campaigns.
While I agree there is no difference between paused and deleted, the 2 different functions exist for easier view options.
I think it’s great Google offered the 50% credit.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:21 am
Did you “Hide” deleted campaigns so you could not see when Google resumed them? That does seem to be unfair on Google’s part. I demand that Google fixes whatever technical glitch does not allow deleted campaigns to actually be deleted, and delete should mean delete, or not be available at all.
March 31st, 2009 at 12:56 pm
It’s slightly surprising that there are actually people siding with Google on this, when it’s clearly a case of Google pushing the penalty for a systemic bug onto their users rather than fixing and doing the right thing.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:08 am
This is a really typicall google behaviour. They have these little scams they pull very discreetly. For example if you have google ads on your own webpage, you have to reach $100 before you get paid. Google uses this rule to their advantage by closing people’s account for “violations” and such and never paying out any money if they had under $100 earned. Same thing with google checkout, they close your account and you’ll never get the pending payments. Can’t remember the url for the article I read about google ads, but I found the one about google checkout: http://www.slash7.com/articles/2009/3/26/google-is-evil-worse-than-paypal-don-t-use-google-checkout-for-your-business
Good article though. Google only cares about profit, that’s it.
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 am
I have been programming for the last 3 years and the ‘delete’ function has never meant an item is available afterwards. One requirement i had once is that delete means ‘archive’, that means its not available in the user interface and can only be retrieved by the administrator through special means. Once still(in google’s case), ‘deleted’ can never mean ‘paused’ by all means!
@Fin Keegan, I agree, google, which WAS a small and smart company has surely grown into a big and dumb company. A sure sign that somebody is soon taking over.
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:36 am
yeah good point Odero, when I press Delete on my keyboard, the text disappears too. It’s gone. Not sure why Adwords should operate any differently to any other system.