Comment Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score 0) 230
Google does this, barely. At my business, we have at least 2-3 phone calls a day from people confused as hell because they typed in "something remotely related to {the type of widgets we're selling}", Google saw the word "widgets" and threw in some ads that were at most barely relevant - but if there's nothing better, "barely relevant" works more than "nothing at all", and the people could not distinguish between the ads and the organic search results. This is not an assumption, it's a repeating theme in phone conversations - "But I searched for {this}, and Google gave me {that}, and now I'm here."
Now, on average we get 1 phone call (with serious questions or something not covered by the website info) per every 100-200 site visitors. Even taking the lower end of the scale, and dividing by 2 to be on the safe side, I can extrapolate that there are at least 50 people / day who fall prey to this deceptive display of ads. That's 50 people who wasted their time - and $ 120 - $ 150 in lost advertising expenses for us. Thanks, Google!
Now, on average we get 1 phone call (with serious questions or something not covered by the website info) per every 100-200 site visitors. Even taking the lower end of the scale, and dividing by 2 to be on the safe side, I can extrapolate that there are at least 50 people / day who fall prey to this deceptive display of ads. That's 50 people who wasted their time - and $ 120 - $ 150 in lost advertising expenses for us. Thanks, Google!