The constant hunt for valuable Google AdWords keywords is akin to Search Engine Optimization – a dark magic that can become very lucrative for those that can figure out how to best their competitors. It’s also very competitive, with companies bidding on keywords as they vie to outdo their rivals. Google has policies in place to protect companies from having their trademarked names abused in ads (for example, I couldn’t create an ad for Apple that linked to TechCrunch), but it isn’t perfect. Today we’ve gotten word of an example of what can go wrong with AdWords’ filters don’t work, and a Google employee may be behind it.
Jeremy Schoemaker has built a name for himself as an online marketing guru at Shoemoney.com, where he writes on a variety of topics, mostly related to making money on the web. Outside of the marketing community he is perhaps best known for this famous photograph, in which he shows off a check displaying his monthly earnings from Google AdSense that total over $130,000.
Unsurprisingly, other marketers have tried to build off Schoemaker’s success through dubious means, registering ads through Google’s AdSense program that use the word ‘Shoemoney’ in their text – a term that Schoemaker has trademarked. Google forbids the practice, and Schoemaker has been able to fend off violations in the past without going to court.
But the latest offense was different. Beginning 4 months ago, Schoemaker began to notice a new violator, who was sending an ad for “Shoemoney” to the domain myincentivewebsite.com. Repeated attempts to contact Google and the offending parties went unanswered (as did a Cease and Desist). The owners of the offending website had set their contact information to ‘private’ through their registrar, so contacting them directly wasn’t easy. Schoemaker got a court ordered subpoena that ordered the violator’s webhost to disclose his personal information.
With his real name in hand, Schoemaker finally managed to get in touch with the alleged violator. The defendant claimed to be unaware of any breaches of Google’s Terms of Service or the Shoemoney trademark. Schoemaker isn’t convinced, stating that “he played dumb every time and was very deceitful with his responses”. To make matters worse, the defendant attempted to clear his name by sending Schoemaker a screenshot of his account featuring a list of keywords he was targeting – a list that Schoemaker says was incredibly similar to his own.
That’s when things started to get strange. A friend of Schoemaker’s discovered that the violator had a number of friends on Facebook who worked for Google’s AdWords. A cached version of his LinkedIn profile stated that he is an employee at Google working as an AdWords Account Strategist, though the title has since been removed. A call to Google’s New York office revealed that someone with his name is listed in the directory, all but confirming Schoemaker’s suspicions that he was dealing with a Google employee.
Schoemaker has filed suit against the violator (and his father, who stepped forward to claim the offending website as his own). At this point it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords, but at the very least it’s hard to believe the Google employee was unaware that his actions were in violation of Google’s Terms of Service.
We have been unable to get in touch with the defendant. Google has given us the following statement:
“‘While we take this kind of allegation seriously we’re not able to comment on specifics.”
The Text ad empire is GOING DOWN
The most pervasive new Internet invasion of privacy, as from today 8 April, 2009! Google AdSense now tracks everyone that sees an advert. No need to click even! Gross! see: http://zunob.co...t-users-privacy
It’s opt -out. Completely legally.
today’s phrase: class action
How would a class action work? I know many people would like to jump onboard this who feel ripped off by google.
Anyone know?
Oops, I used your keyword.
Srsly. I have already called my lawyer.
-Shoemaker
Ask them how to spell your surname – they’ll have it on record I expect.
lolz..This looks very interesting thing. I have never seen such type of thing.
By the way Jason their is a typo mistake in the 4th line of the 1st para where “best” should be changed to “beat”.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
While it may or may not be a typo, and whether or not you’ve encountered it before, it’s a perfectly cromulent turn of phrase.
You realize what a douche you look like with a website in your sig. And your criticizing someone…
Really, “their” is a typo?
I don’t get the sarcasm considering the fact that the huge difference is Keyen was trying to make money off his name.
Don’t be silly Mr Robinson.
This will definitely be an interesting case. Good work Jeremy
He’s never afraid to put himself in the middle of the maelstrom, eh?
Damn if Google Employees are stealing keywords from advertisers that’s nuts!
Find me a large company in which no employee ever does anything underhand, and I’ll show you a large company living in magical-happy-land.
Good Point. Corruption exists in every company I would guess.
I hate to say it, but each time I meet a google employee, they tend to be really nice, really smart, and very good people. When this all shakes out, assuming this guy does work for google, I am sure google will be happy to find out about this and get this guy handled.
Ha, yes, just like they’re happy to give people money who had their adsense accounts terminated for no reason other than to keep Google’s borderline advertising ponzi scheme going. If anything they’ll try to shove it under the rug (like they tried to shove the buying blog posts in Japan fiasco under the rug) and only after that’s not possible will they take action.
Could you explain the logic behind the ponzi-scheme comparison? I’m hoping that it’s better than ‘first thing that popped into my head’, but not particularly confident…
I’m thinking he’ll be fired.
Love it, sue his diapers off Jeremy, then take everything his father has. Good for you on the follow through.
dude sure does love attention
There are a lot of spelling errors in this post.
Nice, Jermey! Go for it man.
This is a publicity stunt and nothing more for Shoemoney. Guess how much more Techcrunch traffic he’ll be driving to his sites now.
if its a publicity stunt why didn’t he sue Google? That would get press!
Well Google could be named later through discovery proccess
So, you think that the rogue (accused) Adwords employee has, in reality, a “6 degrees of separation” business relationship with SM ?
Hmm, me thinks not.
So you are saying ShoeMoney is in with the guy he is suing ?
No, Shoe was really irritated at what this guy was doing.
bingo
Could I ask you to direct your attention to the minimum practitioner requirements section of the Cynic’s Handbook? Specifically, the clause requiring an IQ of 3 or greater.
Of course at the end Shoemoney benefits. Publicity increases popularity (not that he doesn’t have enough already). Shoemoney is great though.
I’ve been following Jeremy for a few years now. I seriously doubt he wants to sue the guy for “everything he has.”
LOL, you still follow him? I stopped doing that once he started to posting bs posts about his life, etc and nothing $ related.
It was only a matter of time before this happened, you’d think they’d pick a less savvy target.
adsense is the biggest scam in the history of internet. Period.
AdSense is by no stretch of the imagination a scam…
Wow, you’ve never used it or heard of comscore
Adsense is a scam? I make money using it. Does that make me a scammer?
AdSense is NOT a scam, however, Google would have the rights to any log files that may contain keywords clicked. It’s possible other employees in the company (or outside with aggregated data) could extract winning keywords from the program.
It’s likely, if this is a Google employee, they will quickly be let go and everything will settle. Very tempting for staff to think they are getting away with something using inside knowledge for personal benefit, however, that’s theft from the company.
Look at the AOL data, if you don’t think this kind of thing already happens AND large companies aren’t adding auditing to quickly clear these problems, then you’ve got more surprises coming. Kudo’s to Jeremy for taking action, he’s ahead of the game in many ways.
Sincerely,
Justin
Well, I’ve been following Jeremy for a few days now (and recently got dropped from ShoppingAds aka AuctionAds, which I feel Jeremy offloaded at just the right moment before the eBay Partner Network rendered AA/SA irrelevant or outmoded)…
Back on topic – it’s interesting that TC is picking this up and there is nary a peep on SM. In fact, it was only because I follow Shoe on Twitter and got an Tweet from indicating that he was reading this very TC article that I found out about it.
Considering that Jeremy has been relatively vocal (and outspoken) in his “screw Google” and “SEO sucks” approach, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
If this really is an insider trading case over at G, it’ll be the Enron of the PPC/SEM industry heheh – who knows.
Good luck, Jeremy.
I know you were kidding about the Enron joke, but even as an analogy in a much smaller case, it still wouldn’t work. The Enron scandal not only involved tons of upper level executives of Enron, but also an accounting firm, and a ton of banks and funds (like Merrill Lynch, etc).
I doubt any important person except maybe some random VP would know about this. I’m surprised this is even news. I doubt anyone really cares. I make 50% of my income because of Google products and I don’t give a shit.
Google is quick to kick publishers out of their program when they violate the TOS. I guess as long as you’re spending money on their ads you can do whatever you want. I hope Jeremy wins this case.
Amen! Shoe should surly win this one. Hopefully google will do what’s right and terminate the rat!(if indeed this guy actually works for google)
I am an advertiser with google adwords that puts me in an awkward position too -
There are so many instances where people violate the Google TOS in regards to keywords. I am absolutely chocked by the internal Google connection in this story. I’m not surprised Jeremy Schoemaker is putting a full court press on this guy as this is the best marketing he can get for his company. I’m sure it’s a matter of principle for him to take this guy down all the way.
how to best their competitors
i have just started to learn english can you explain what does this mean pliz
Essentially, Jeremy is suing a Google Adwords employee (allegedly) for (allegedly) using bidding strategies that appear to be (allegedly) too similar to those in the campaigns of Jeremy.
Think of it in terms of insider SEM.
It means “how to beat their competitors”.
I knew it was a pun LOL
Funny thing is Google used to have all the adwords people spend a few hundred dollars so they would know how it all works… would be funny if it turns out to have started by that way
Totally! :_
If this guy is a Google employee, and if he used his Google position to get access to Shoemaker’s list of terms, and if he then used that list to compete with Shoemaker on Google, Google will end up being invited to this party as a defendant. At that point, they will write Shoemaker a check that makes $130,000 look quite small.
Think about it.Who is the beneficiary here (if it happened like that)? Google. Prices just got bid up for every term in Shoemaker’s collection, and it was Google that pocketed the extra money. There are plenty of expert witnesses who can come in and testify impressively about excess fees paid, profits lost, and so on.
Google won’t want that. They failed to supervise their employee who was trusted with sensitive data, and had no safeguards in place to notice the overlap even after Shoemaker called part of the problem to their attention. If Shoemaker is half way reasonable in his demands (and aside from being a reasonable guy, there is the issue that he needs a continuing relationship with Google more than Google needs one with him), this gets settled for something near the provable damages.
I don’t know, couldn’t Google just terminate the employee and implement safeguards so that it doesn’t happen again. That may actually get them off the hook.
Think about it. If your employee in the course of his duties rear ends someone’s car and totals it, telling them you will put safeguards in place isn’t going to get you off. The law will make you buy them a replacement car because of the injury your agent has already caused. The same basic principle of compensating someone who has been injured by your breach of a duty applies here.
If this happened the way the story suggests it may have, Google has definite, calculable exposure (plus some soft exposure with regard to speculative lost profits, reputation damage for Shoemaker’s name being linked to a cheesy incentive site, and so on). In those circumstances, the issue isn’t whether Google will pay money. The issue is whether both parties will be reasonable and get to a realistic number without undue drama and publicity.
I can’t agree with you more. I remember the story of a friends company where one of the staff took out a new phone line (back when phones were expensive! ) and ran up thousands of dollars of costs, all without the owners knowing about it.
They guy had no permission for incurring costs, but of course the company ended up being responsible.
Luckily for me, all my staff are perfect
“At this point it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords…”
Couldn’t this have been done on purpose (higher ups instructing AdWords Andy to buy up words for other people’s websites/brands/domains) to keep more money at the Googleplex? Why pay Shoe say $150k each quarter when AdWords Andy can buy off 25% of Shoe’s potential earnings? Instead of Shoe getting the money it gets wiped off the books and AdWords Andy gets, say, a 25% bonus at the end of the year for doing real well on his 20% time “project”. Not trying to spew conspiracy theories here but hey, times are tough, even at the Big G.
With a story like this, your imagination can run wild. Example: If Google runs a hitbot on my ad, can I prove it? It’s not something you can prove one way or the other, low conversions or not. Or what if a keyword goes up in price just seconds after I bid on it?
Or Google could make $1000 off my page and pay me $20. It’s against the TOS to ask advertisers questions. But why bother when each user sees something different? Maybe Google shows Chinese ads to my Chinese readers. All that info is outside the scope of my crystal ball. So I take my $20 and shut up.
It would take a >lot more than $20 to shut me up. That’s why I don’t bother with Google at all outside of using their search when I have to. There are too many moral quandaries with their advertising platform (In fact, with every product they offer, including search), too much obfuscation and vagueness – no thank you very much.
Not likely. Not the way it usually happens. Stuff like this happens at every big company sooner or later (again, if it happened) – an employee does something they shouldn’t, and as it happens the company gets a short term ancillary benefit. A standard example is a brokerage firm where a stock broker loads up a geriatric customer with a lot of high commission products that aren’t suited to that customer. Even though the company benefits short term, the legitimate companies don’t actually want this to happen, because over the long run the costs (legal, reputational, etc.) outweigh the benefits.
Google may be liable for failure to supervise, or failure to put safeguards in place to protect its customers’ data. It is very unlikely, however, that they had any advance knowledge this kind of stuff was going on.
Dang Shoe! Going after the big boys now… Good luck man, although it sounds like u have a good case.
Good luck bro,
@d_rey
Hoping he gets fired like us publishers would in this case.
The only surprise here, is that it hasn’t happened sooner.
Interesting, if we assumed that it’s still unclear if the violator used his position at Google to bypass its trademarked words filters or to access Schoemaker’s own list of keywords – which I think is pretty obvious he did – We can not overlook the fact that he is a Google employee.
So don’t try to convince me that he are unaware of Google’s Terms of Service. For GOD Sake, he is AdWords Account Strategist as his LinkedIn profile says.
I would think Google will fire the employee for violating the TOS if they find out who he/she is.
Looks like he might be getting another photo opp with a big cheque from Google.
Big check, yes. Photo opp, no. There will be a non-disclosure agreement attached to the check so that he never tells anyone just how big the check was.
you are correct sir!
Man, if this has been going on for a while, that may be the reason why keywords aint effective for long.
that’s just absurd.
don’t be friends with work people on facebook. and tighten up that security.
regardless, this guy is going to lose, badly.
Messing with Jeremy was a mistake and Google will pay handsomely to shut him up if this really was one of their employees abusing privileges.
@robert_brady
i spend adsense dollars every month. i don’t feel very happy right now. if this is proven, it will be a be big set-back to the google adsense marketing business. i would love to know the keywords used by my competitors!
what a damn dummy. shoemoney no matter what you think of the guy isnt the one you want to screw around with. this looks very bad on google behalf makes you wonder if you put your code on app engine will it be safe from their employees looking for a 20 percent project to undertake. google sucks
I put my faith in google on a daily basis. If this ultimately proves to be true and a google employee was behind this, this is extremely disturbing on a number of levels.
My hope is that Google is EXTREMELY aggressive in being transparent and bringing the issue and all relevant facts to the surface regardless of whether their findings are negative or positive in regards to the employee involved.
I have faith in the big boys at google to sort it out.
I’m sure Google will fix it, and quickly
I was told some time ago that Google allows their employees to use Adwords to make money on the Web as affiliates. Therefore, if an advertiser has found a creative way to make a profit on the Web, there’s no rule at Google saying their Adwords specialists can’t learn from what you’re doing and copy it. When we spoke with Google they were very candid about allowing this, which caused us to hide all conversion data from Google. I wonder if this is still their policy and whether they are still candid about this policy.
If you know that to be true, that is significant news. In my opinion, it isn’t any different than insider trading.
No kidding? That is a good spin on this article for PR purposes.
As of last year it was definitely true Google encouraged their employees to use and run adwords campaigns. As I recall, my account rep said he got a $50/m credit to use on Adwords.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
I used to be a SEO affiliate & a similar expirence happened to me in 2003 by the employee of the affiliate network Commission Junction…That guy basically stole my entire keyword list & copied the website which resulted in a loss of more then 500k!.
Said this i can understand the temptation of someone working in Adwords. What you will do if everyday you see the innner workings of PPC Super affiliates making millions every month??
I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens at google all the time and not just with adwords. I hope this gets picked up by major media publications.
I guess I should now be more careful with google and make sure I don’t make too much money to be noticed. With bad economy and all, google employees are probably looking over all top performers accounts now.
This wont get picked up by major publications. Google spends to much money with them.
Take it to them Shoe!
Talk about the ultimate in privacy breach if it was true what the employee did. I always wondered how they could pay someone like a security guard at a casino to walk you and your $1 million dollar winnings when he’s making a $54,000 a year salary. Same with Google employees, or even bank tellers when they’re working a legitimate job that doesn’t make nearly as much money as those they hold to serve.
OMG,
http://www.shoe...ageViewsIndex=1
I’m surprised that Citibank actually has $130,000 to give him.
It was a fake check, do some research on this fool. I have seen first hand!
What a case…it seems Go*ogle must reconsider its terms..
You don’t need to be a google employee to figure out what keywords websites are using. There are many tools out there that will give you the keywords of your competitors.
Look at:
http://www.keycompete dot com
http://www.keywordspy dot com
Ok but that does not explain why he had the same adgroups + keywords.
Also just checked keycompete it shows nothing for shoemoney so there goes that argument.
Not quite the same as having full access to somebody’s adwords account.
Keywords are just one piece of the puzzle. Ads, offers, landing pages, etc etc are all just as important.
amen eric
Isn’t Shoemoney the guy that wears a shirt with his own logo to SXSW? It’s like wearing your own band’s t-shirt at a gig.
And honestly, who has their own logo? On a t-shirt? That they wear in public? Besides Shoemoney?
I think that Michael Jordan dude has one…
Michael Jordan can dunk from the free throw line
And Shoemoney can dunk from his easy chair!
Shoe can also dunk a doughnut pretty well too! LOLZ
Wow someone who loves what they do for a living… imagine that!
A friend at school used to wear a Tshirt with his own pic on it..yuck!
“There are a lot of spelling errors in this post.”
Maybe that’s an homage to Shoemoney?
I wonder if Google employees also parse Gmail accounts for ideas for their 20% projects?
i’d be pissed if this happened to me. all that hard work he put in is now being stolen? i’d be doing everything in my power to stop them.
Nice groundwork to pick up the linked in cached site and facebook stuff too, it’s hard to hide on the net these days.
Very Interesting. Now where does the Giant run?
I have great faith in Google but cant say this cannot be true.
Wondering if someone from Google would officially respond to this post.
AdWords Team, Are you listening?
It will be interesting to see what happens – if Shoemoney proves on court Google employee has been using his position to get keyword lists this will be a devastating negative PR for Google.
With all the negative publicity google has had with privacy issues in realtion to targetted advertising gmail & google maps this is something I think they need to deal with quickly & decisively or it could quickly gain the reputation as a company that can’t be trusted. I’m interested to see how this story develops
Shoe is looking like Lars Ulrich…. Nah Just trying to say something funny… Sue G after all they are liable for what their team do.
more people mess with the shoe than we can shake a shoe at. me i love shoemoney.com and feel if the violator had just read the blog he too would be a millionaire like shoe money!
isn’t this like insider trading and surely google are liable too
Shoemoney is a bigtime scamster. He inflates his success so much. I will give an example below.
Statistics for fighters.com:
It shows there are more than 800 online users. Some months before it showed some 2000 users online.
Its alexa rank is around 170k and for yesterday it is 370k.
Many say alexa is not accurate. How about google’s ad planner. It shows just 11k unique visiters. For a supposedly so popular site this is way too small.
Even nextpimp.com used to show that there are 90k (you read it right) users online anytime.
His adsense cheque is said to be fake. I read it in digitalpoint.
Someone prove me wrong. Where are you SM.
umm you are a complete idiot. Do some reasearch.
Really prove it.
Easy, you read, and believed, something at DP..
@Feydakin: Exactly what I was going to post.
@readthis That is just silly. If you have spent any time at all with Jeremy, or really read his materials, you will notice that he is an unbelievably brilliant guy at figuring things out no one has figured out before.
Some of the stuff that he has tucked away in the Shoe-tools are things that as far as I know, nobody has ever pulled off.
I am a total google fanboy, and really work to abide by their very high standards they set. I think google employees should also all be expected to abide by those standards as well.
Then what about the traffic stats. One guy asked shoemoney whether there were 2xxx users online at fighters.com and he said yes. Why would a site which has 2xxx users anytime have an alexa rank of nearly 100k. Alexa is not accurate but atleast it is approximate.
Okay – seriously. You’re going to cry about someone else’s supposed site stats? For starters, that’s not even what this article is about. Secondly, you live up to exactly what Shoe says – there will always be people out there who waste their time hating instead of working on their own projects. Sounds like you. I’d get making my own money before crying about some random MMA site.
I agree purposeinc!
Isn’t there some humour in JS a) ripping off ad copy with his tools, and b) getting ripped off for his keywork list?
Frankly, JS’s “tools” which allow you or anyone to scrap ad copy and reuse it as your own is in the same league as stealing a keyword list.
Always a little humor in everything.