Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Google Offering $100 AdWords Coupon - STAY AWAY!

Many of this Blog’s visitors have their own Blogs and Websites. Some of them use Google to promote their sites. Google is an important part of my own site promotion. At the risk of Google dropping my positive ranking, I feel I must share this information with you. If Google is offering you a $100 AdWords free trial, STAY AWAY!!! You WILL be billed for all ads running past your trial and you will not know when that is. There is no notification until you are billed; then it’s too late. They require your credit card number upfront (probably to guarantee they can screw you later).

Many Bloggers and Website editors have received this “coupon” and signed up for the program. Why not? It’s free…NOT! They have realized the hard way that this is a scam by Google.

Just two weeks ago, on a flight home from California, I was fortunate to sit next to a Google employee, specifically, an AdWords consultant. He offered me tips on promoting my sites—I was grateful. Although the tips he offered were legitimate, and free, he did not mention this coupon scam.

The Google tools he recommended were:

*Google Insights
*Google Analytics
*Google Trends
*Google Webmaster

I also “squeezed” out of him the best tip for getting Google’s attention to your site (something he was not comfortable relaying due to confidentiality terms of his job at Google); inbound links from “related” Websites is the most effective way to get ranked by Google.

Back to the scam. Although I will not use the $100 coupon, and definitely DO NOT recommend my viewers do either, I do suggest Blog and Website editors utilize the tools listed above and provided free through Google.

Happy Blogging!

No comments:

Post a Comment