Midyear-2008 Lead Company Update

Here's one of those Hometown Quotes links with my name, business name, and phone number in it. This information was used WITHOUT my permission.

If someone was searching for me, they might find this link. If they clicked it, it would take them to Hometownquotes.com's lead generation page. I just found this link, as it's live on Google.

Here's how it looks:

Place to buy Blue Cross Individual Health Insurance- 4 visits - Jun 12 Contact:Michael Hrad, G.A.Health Insurance Professionals LLCPrincipal/Managing Partner239-699-1543. As far as isknown, in the past the main, ...
souksconscious.info/blue-cross-individual-health-insurance/ - Similar pages - Note this


If you click the page listing above, it goes to this page:

http://publish1.cutecat.net/hqpublish.php?koko=1

....and then forwards to this page, THE LEAD FORM PAGE!

Free Health Insurance Quotes

This is unacceptable and unethical! $100 he says it's an old affiliate that they no longer work with, have reprimanded, yadayada bullsh*t.

Check out the link for yourself:

Contact Michael Hrad, G.A - Google Search.

Scroll down till you seen these two. Click away, right to HometownQuotes.com folks! WTF????????

Aetna Health Insurance Quote online resources- 2 visits - 7:42pm Contact:Michael Hrad, G.A.Health Insurance Professionals LLCPrincipal/Managing Partner239-699-1543. 01/16/2008 09:28 PM. Aetna Health Insurance ...
scumstight.info/aetna-health-insurance-quote/ - Similar pages - Note this


Place to buy Blue Cross Individual Health Insurance- 6 visits - 7:41pm Contact:Michael Hrad, G.A.Health Insurance Professionals LLCPrincipal/Managing Partner239-699-1543. As far as isknown, in the past the main, ...
souksconscious.info/blue-cross-individual-health-insurance/ - Similar pages - Note this

:no:
 
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AND....LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT...THIS WAS NOT AN INADVERTENT BID ON KEYWORDS. THIS WILL NOT BE TALKED IN CIRCLES BY MR. MARKETING GURU. THIS LINK WAS DELIBERATELY AND DECEIVINGLY CREATED TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO HTQ BY USING MY GOOD NAME.
:no:
 
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Please see the post here - Midyear-2008 Lead Company Update

All it takes is to contact me. It REALLY is as simple as that. I do not see the link you speak of though and I searched for every variation of your name.

However, you have provided the link to affiliate 4723.

I have already (as of 11:49 PM tonight Central time)

1. placed a request with our IT department to block his affiliate links

2. notified the affiliate his account is now closed as he has violated our terms and conditions (yes, what he did VIOLATED our terms...we address this in the terms they sign)

and

3. Deactivated the account and made a notice to not pay for any leads

#3 brings me to the point I have made repeatedly.

This affiliate has sent...guess how many leads...

ZERO!

I understand your frustration guys, I really do. But you make mountains out of molehills when you focus on the little keywords that get searched for 3 times a month.

While I have taken Michael's request very serious and always do, these small time affiliates that do crap like this are not something to worry about.

I hope this helps.

Michael, please contact me OFF BOARD as I am MORE THAN HAPPY to help you contact this affiliate to have the page removed. All WE can do is remove his links to US. He will still probably put up a link for another company.

I can get you in touch with our legal counsel to get you the affiliate's information and you can pursue legal action against the affiliate himself. :jimlad:
 
MattMcWilliams said:
Just wanted you to know my offer still stands to address this question. However I reviewed this thread thoroughly and found no question for me to respond to, so I am not sure that I understand your beef.

I am more than happy (as should be obvious by now) to reply, but I am not sure to what I am to reply. ;)

Also, I am 100% positive you can easily find some random example of any company bidding on a keyword of which you don't approve.

This is EASY to do with Broad Match on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. If I bid on the keyword "health insurance quotes" and broad match it, we will probably use negative keywords such as: "cheapest," "medicare," "medicaid," etc.

However if you find us listed for "bran muffin health insurance quotes" it is not because we are BIDDING on "bran muffin health insurance quotes"

There are thousands...no millions of possible negative keywords. I think Google allows like 100 per campaign. You can do the math and figure something is getting left out.

So, providing examples of search terms that are searched 7 times a day nationwide that DO have legit keyword strings in them does no good. Statistically, those keywords are likely to produce about 1 lead every 3 years. At our volume, that is not even going to be a BLIP on the radar.

And if results in a bad lead, send it back to us and we will refund your money. Odds are such obscure keywords did not cost us a whole lot of money anyway.

This is somewhat high-level knowledge of the PPC game. I suppose I take for granted that everyone knows these things, which is my fault. That would be like assuming I know the underwriting guidelines for XYZ company :twitchy: when I obviously do not.

I hope this information helps. Feel free to ask me anything else.

By the way, I spoke with a very nice agent today on the phone who called regarding this thread. I won't mention his name on here, but he was a delight to talk to and I hope that my information was helpful.
Click to expand...

Hate to say it, but I and several others, agree that HTQ is one of the Worse Vendors in the Market.

And your point about having a conversation with someone, means nothing. So I dont understand your point. Show me where HTQ is located on the 1st Page of Google with Major Keywords, Tough to locate!!!!!
 
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Pretty good battle here. Here's my 12 cents:

I have used HTQ leads in the past. Not the best. Not the worst. Were they "one of the worst"? Since my sampling was small, I can't comment on that aspect.

In fairness though, I am always checking to see which lead companies are at or near the top for "health insurance quote" and solid phrases like that. I don't like to buy leads that were generated by an email to someone. NQ does that through their affiliates. I imagine a lot of companies do.
 
dmiller90 said:
Show me where HTQ is located on the 1st Page of Google with Major Keywords, Tough to locate!!!!!
Click to expand...

Do you mean like the 2 listings (plus 2 more of affiliates) for "home insurance quotes," or the number ONE listing (in the natural listings which get 10 times more clicks than PPC) for "free home insurance quotes," or the 2 listings (1 natural, 1 affiliate) for "homeowners insurance quotes," or the top 5 affiliate listing for "free health insurance quotes," OR the 2 listings (1 affiliate) for "health insurance quotes," or the 3 listings (1 natural, 1 affiliate, one PPC of ours) for "auto insurance quotes"

OK, yeah I could keep going, but I have Googled enough for one day.

This does not even include Yahoo, where we rank higher (and which STILL gets about 30% of search traffic)

It's not all about being #1 for the keyword you want on Google. That is just a terrible marketing strategy. I wish that people would get over that.

Also, we geotarget and day-part all of our ads (read: spend money wisely since the point is to ahem, make money here)

Geotargeting means in IL you might see an ad for us and not see it in WA - since WA sucks for health insurance (sorry it just does)

Day-parting means that we run our ads only at times that are best for conversions and for agents to get the leads - So you might see our add at 3:00 PM but not at 2:00 AM.

This is online marketing 101 really :cool:

Maybe this information will help some more.
 
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