Can Search Spiders Follow Ppc Links?, Spiders and PPC Options

[dferguson]

Hello all,
I have a question regarding PPC advertising and search engine spiders.

If spiders follow links from my PPC advertising, does this count as a click?

My site is new (No PR), and I can't find it in search engines unless I search for unique text. Since I can't find it, I make the assumption that others can't find it either. My PPC advertising should be the primary method of finding this site.

When I view my visitor statistics, I noticed that the majority of visitors (56%) only looked at one page. My PPC advertising sends the surfer to a page that lists about 20 widgets with a picture of each widget. If a user was really searching for a widget, I would think that they would click on one, not just open the page and leave. I know I will get visitors that do that, but I wouldn't expect the majority.

I'm also noticing that my PPC ads are showing up in the results of smaller search engines and directories. These look like organic results, but the text and the URL are my PPC ad. If I search for the text of my PPC ad, I see that Google has spidered these pages. I'm guessing that Google is smart enough not to follow the link, but what about all the other spiders out there?

[Jill]

Welcome, dferguson! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

Not sure I'm totally following you, but here's what I think, based on what you've said.

The major engines like Google don't count adwords ads as a link to your site. However, if another smaller engine picks up those links (they may be making a profit on them if people click), it's possible that Google could also pick them up as links.

And yes, if they do and they're in Google, they will have your Ad link as opposed to your plain html link on them. Which would mean you'd be paying for those clicks.

That's my understanding at least.

Others here may have a better idea at what you're seeing.

Jill

[dferguson]

Thank you Jill for the quick reply. Looking back over the post, I think I made it a little wordy.

What I really meant to say was:
When a search engine spiders a page full of PPC ads, it will attempt to follow the links because it doesn't know that these are all ads. It begins by following the first PPC ad link, followed the next PPC ad link, continuing down the line until all links had been spidered.

Since these links are PPC, wouldn't these companies get charged their bid amount simply because the search engine followed them, and not because a human actually clicked on them?

[Jill]

Hmm...my guess would be that the spidering doesn't cause a click, but I would defer to those more technical than I am.

However, if the engine spiders them, then it also adds them to their database. If/when that happens, any clicks WILL be charged to you.

[Alan Perkins]

PPC companies should use the robots.txt protocol to prevent "good" spiders following their links.

They should also use other techniques to stop "bad" spiders following links, or at least stop the advertiser being charged for spiders. This forms part of their fraud detection (even though the spider's intent isn't always to defraud).

[bkernst]

In my opinion, any decent PPC system should be able to distinguish between somebody actually clicking on an ad or a spider indexing a site, otherwise they would get a lot of complaints and probably also lawsuits, due to clients having to pay for clicks which are not actually clicks. This is why a spider is not supposed to have a user agent string that looks like a web browser and vice versa.

Bernhard

[SearchRank]

This is why it may be wise to create landing pages specifically for your PPC ads and then closely monitor traffic. If you see referrers from search engines and you know that the page is not internally linked within your site structure, then you can be pretty sure that spider has caused you a "per click" charge.

Alan is correct that PPC providers should put measures in place to either block spiders from crawling ads or not calculate visits from them in your per click fees. I have seen this problem before. we have a client who operates a large antique marketplace and charges his customers who have store fronts per click fees when someone is interested in their products. He has had to battle "spider" clicks in this same way.

[Haystack]

A link to your site through a pay per click ad also won't help your site's link popularity since it doesn't point directly to your site.

When I view my visitor statistics, I noticed that the majority of visitors (56%) only looked at one page. My PPC advertising sends the surfer to a page that lists about 20 widgets with a picture of each widget. If a user was really searching for a widget, I would think that they would click on one, not just open the page and leave. I know I will get visitors that do that, but I wouldn't expect the majority.

How about sending visitors to each of the individual widget pages (when appropriate) rather than to the listing of widgets? This should help improve your conversion rate. Also, take a look at what kind of pages your competition is sending their visitors to for new ideas on how to improve your conversions.

[dferguson]

Thank you all for your suggestions and comments.

I like the idea of sending each ad to a different URL.

Is there any way that I can find where my competitors are sending there visitors without clicking on their ad? I hate to do that since I know their paying for it.

[Haystack]

Is there any way that I can find where my competitors are sending there visitors without clicking on their ad?  I hate to do that since I know their paying for it.

When you right-click on an ad, you should be able to see the page they're sending people to on your browser's status bar along the bottom of the page.