Looking for Reviews on Ad Matching Company "Vertical Search Works"
-
Hey there,
We got cold called by "Vertical Search Works" - VerticalSearchWorks.com and while it sounds great (low CPC compared to our current PPC stuff) on great networks (DIY, HGTV), no contracts, pause anytime...
But RipOffReport has two bad reviews on them and I have not been able to search out anything else on them online. If anyone has insight before we start working with them, let me know!
Thanks!
-
Have you had any luck with other companies that are selling the same kind of service? It seems to me that reaching out to the companies that they put your ads on and just bypassing VSW would be a better option. I don't know if the pricing would be the same as what VSW offers but at least you would reduce the possibility of being scammed.
-
Hi Fancois, this comment above from (Feb 13) is older. Did you see my above comment from March 16th, 2012?
-
Hi Pashmina,
Was wondering the results of your test. Have recently interacted with VSW and not sure if it's even worth giving it a trial run. Their CPC is much higher than Adwords and I question their contextual targeting ability.
The account manager is nice, but a fast talker. He seems to be more accustomed to dealing with people that know nothing about SEM.
Any feedback you have would be welcomed!
-
That's a bummer, Pashmina!
I hate that argument that some of the advertisers are giving.
"Please spend $1k for a banner ad on our site."Sorry, we didn't get anything from it last time we tried.
"You were expecting CONVERSIONS!? You know, banner ads are really just a branding opportunity..."
Maybe for YOU, buddy...
-
Soooo... we ran our test with Vertical Search Works. Like Kristi's experience, we received traffic but the conversion rate was terrible, and well below par of our other paid advertising campaigns.
While I think their account service people were very nice, I did get into a bit of a healthy discussion (argument) with one of their Sales dudes about the "value" of their service and product.
This guy spent a good 15 minutes trying to convince me that the value shouldn't be measured in just conversions, but also in the 2 million plus impressions the ads received. I shot back and said that aside from lack of conversions which was obviously a driving force for an e-commerce client, site engagement in way of bounce rate, time on site, and page views were also below par. I also said impressions was a weak argument and a point with no merit given the client's goals (MORE SALES). This discussion then devolved into him defending the efficacy of their ad program, with me making funny faces as I listened (which thankfully he could not see).
Look, VSW sales dude: performance of your ads sucked. Plain and simple. I was both a little amused and a little annoyed that this guy was trying to convince me I was wrong.
Anyone care to agree, (laugh with me), or play devil's advocate?
-
Interesting. Okay we're are planning to run a test for one of our clients too. I'll post back in a couple months if we see any results. Thanks for the quick reply.
-
Hi Pashmina,
They were very nice but we didn't receive any conversions for what we spent. We spent about $500 and got some traffic from some high profile sites but nothing happened. I think some of it came from recipes which was not supposed to happen.
We did not have the budget to continue to test further.
-
Kristi, Did you ever go for the program with Vertical Search and how did it turn out?
-
Thanks David
-
Can't tell you about them - but i will say that cpc isn't as important as what type of quality visitor they send ie bounce rate , time on site , conv rate etc
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
Paid Search Marketing | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” . Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check. Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
PPC: how to get rid of an ad appearing on a keyword we don't want?
Hi, Our ad on Google Ads is appearing for a search we don't want. it isn't in our search keywords and when i try and ad it to our negative ones, we get the error " You cannot exclude keywords that are targeted " which i assume means that google thinks we are bidding on it? We have a selection of broad phrase matches so i can only think that this is where it's coming from? Do you have any tips on tracking down which keyword is generating this ad and how we can turn it off? (we don't want to pay for clicks on this search if possible!) Btw - i have turned off each keyword in turn to test it = nothing. have then paused the whole campaign = gets rid of the ad (but this is our most successful campaign so i can't just turn it off). Any advice super super welcome. thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | Fubra1 -
Adwords Duplicate Keywords with Different Match Types - Good or Bad?
If you have the following keywords in an Ad Group advertising for a product, let's for example call it "target" product [target product] "target product" +target +product I've found that the exact match keyword has the highest conversion rate in almost all circumstances. So it would make sense to have a higher max bid on the exact match then phrase or broad batch. Even with lots of negative search terms to maximize conversion on the broader matches, if the bid is the same as exact match, the cost per conversion will be much higher (too high.) However in chatting with an Adwords Support Rep (on a different matter) they stated after looking through my account at the end of the chat: " duplicate keywords will impact on quality score. your all keywords will compete with each other" However many of the ad groups in question these duplicate keywords have quality score of 9 and 10. So obviously if there is an effect it seems it may be minimal. I thought it was pretty common for people to bid higher on more exact match and lower on more broad match. What's the real story here? Was this support rep not seeing the big picture?
Paid Search Marketing | | JCCMoz1 -
Adwords Expanded Text Ads - How are they working for you?
I think it would be nice to get a consensus from more people. The day expanded text ads came out last week, I immediately jumped on it and created them for all my campaigns. I still left some of the old ads running in each ad group so that I could compare. Looking at the conversion data from the last week, the conversion rates are between 2-7x lower on the expanded text ads, and as a result, the cost per conversion is 2-5x higher as well. Basically, they're performing horribly. The click-through rate is mildly higher, but who cares if they're not converting? I know it's only a week's worth of data, but it seems the difference is enough to be statistically significant. I'm wording what everyone else's experience has been.
Paid Search Marketing | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Will User See More Than One of My Facebook Ads
I have numerous campaigns set up in my Facebook Advertising account. If I have different ads in different campaigns but with the same geographic and demographic targeting, could one individual see multiple instances of my advert?
Paid Search Marketing | | Superdream0 -
Is ReachLocal Killing My SEO Work?
I have a customer that I did SEO work for. I cleaned up title tags, content, image tags, the works. Recently, they signed up with Reach Local to do some Pay Per Click. The problem/question I have is that reach local completely copied the entire site and put it on their server. So all my work for this company is now completely replicated. Now there are two sites. ex. windowname.com and windowname.reachlocal.net. It appears they do this for all their customers. Does Google view this as duplicate content? Does my regular website lose positioning to the more powerful ReachLocal?
Paid Search Marketing | | smartlinksolutions0 -
Whoa! Newsletter Subscription Form in Adwords Ad??? How can I do this?
I just googled the term "Mobile Lead Gen" and found this ad: http://cl.ly/260X3f0t1z1j1R1m212d Sweet! It has the subscription form signup directly within the Google Ad. Looks like Chrome even pre-populated my email address in the form. Does anyone know how to set this up within Adwords? I've never seen that option before. wXOGJ
Paid Search Marketing | | shawn810 -
Unexpected % of new visits from search traffic.
Hello Three days ago launched an AdWords campaign (text ad) designed to bring people to my site (www.quipeutlefaire.com). I've been tracking the visits using Google Analytics and I find that 67% of Paid Traffic visits are new visitors (see attached image). I find this very weird, I was expecting that people who come to my site through adwords to be completely new visitors (100% instead of 67%) . What's happening? are people using my ads as a sort of "bookmark" to come back to the site? Thank you for your help gsqMj.jpg
Paid Search Marketing | | QPLF0