chandanlog(3C): When did you last click on a Google ad?

20 Jan 2006 When did you last click on a Google ad?

BBC Money program has an interesting documentary on Google bubble. There are few business practices like Google fraud that I wasn't aware of.

As far as I can remember, I have never clicked on a Google ad, atleast not intentionally. My eyes automatically filter them out for some reason. I wonder if there are actually people who click on a Google advertisement or even buy anything from there. (If you did, then please leave comment!)

While I have bought stuff looking at advertisements on TV or news paper; read product reviews on CNET news.com or ZDnet to buy stuff, or even searching Google for addresses of shops, I hardly pay any attention to Google ads. If no real persons are paying any attention to Google ads, why do people still advertize there?

Link | Comments [8]

Comments:

For example today :) If you search for something (cheap flight london san francisco) I don't see reason not to click on sponsored links first

Posted by Jan Matis on January 21, 2006 at 05:30 AM PST #

Most of the ad servers that I can find are redirected to localhost within my /etc/hosts. Additionally I've setup regular expressions within the Mozilla adblock plugin to filter out all ad content which is placed as include within web pages. I remember a time where the internet didn't have commercials.

Posted by guest on January 21, 2006 at 08:47 AM PST #

I can understand that you can check airfare in ads out of curiosity. Have you actually bought any tickets there? Almost all ad sites look shabby and phishing sites.[ doesn't mean that there cant be polished phishing sites ]. BTW, my I prefer my travel agent who almost always gets me the lowest as well as comfortable lines (less connections, better timings) better than Yahoo or trevelocity gives.

Posted by Chandan on January 21, 2006 at 09:16 AM PST #

I did click several times, as the ads were quite relevant to what I was looking for. I didn't buy anything because the prices weren't that good. Dmitri

Posted by Dmitri Trembovetski on January 23, 2006 at 08:24 PM PST #

I did find Malgudi Days DVD through Google Ads, for which I had been hunting since past nine years.

Posted by 59.144.36.87 on January 24, 2006 at 05:43 AM PST #

Your your caution, there seems to have been cases of malware and spyware sold through Google ads as reported here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20060126/tc_cmp/177103897 I dont think google or any ad agency verifies its ad clients.

Posted by Chandan on January 26, 2006 at 08:15 AM PST #

Look, it's obvious. Do we need to spell it for people? Any business that is willing to pay the premium for Google ads, obviously isn't going to be the lowest cost for what you want. There will always be someone else, saving money by not paying the pimp, with a lower price. I don't know where people get the idea that the Google ads lead to goodness. It may be good for the business, in getting customers that are clueless, but it's not goodness from the customer point of view? Even their froogle thing wasn't good at finding the lowest cost. And that's gone now anyhow. I guess they realized that being an ad-based business, it doesn't make sense with steering traffic to low-cost stores for free!

Posted by Johnny on May 11, 2007 at 09:31 PM PDT #

Many times I do not look at the Google ads...but other times I do. I think it depends on if I'm just researching something or actually trying to buy something online

Posted by Audio Equipment Speakers on April 01, 2009 at 11:02 AM PDT #