Google's paid clicks controversy doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, with advertisers joining the chorus of critics who say the search giant has given them the "Google slap."
For the uninformed, the "Google slap" is something of a double-whammy that appears to be the result of a change to the AdWords algorithm. According to a Wired blog post, many advertisers who use Google are seeing a spike in prices paid for ads with a simultaneous drop in conversion rates.
One anonymous Wired source said he could tolerate a rate hike, but not a drop in conversions. According to the Wired source, a campaign that yielded 100,000 impressions for ads served for two keywords in February dropped to about 20,000 impressions in March. The anonymous source claims the drop in impressions from February to March resulted in a parallel drop in revenue from $250,000 to nearly zero.
While the lost business may seem catastrophic, Google has maintained that its changes are meant to cut back on so-called thin sites that provide little content while raking in huge chunks of cash via AdSense.
