Let me tell you the story of how Big Foot wiped out my pay per click program. Now I’m not a big believer in the big harry beast, even though my brother swears he has seen him on his front porch. I personally think it was our cousin needing a place to crash. So here is my story. It was late one night when it happened. I don’t remember much about the night other than when I awoke all that was left were the tattered remains of a once productive campaign. I was not alone. Most, if not all of my friends were hit with the dreaded Google “slap”. I had heard the rumors that Google was cracking down on business opportunity scams. I assumed it did not pertain to me because my opportunity was legit. I sold a product that gave more value to my customers than what they paid for it. I only thought the police used profiling but apparently Google does too. An we all know profiling is wrong! Because my business fell within their broad parameters I was guilty of trying to scam the public. I do not completely disagree with Google’s decision because I understand that their ultimate goal is to provide the best experience possible for the folks who use their search engine. What I do not agree with is the way they did it. Because I am inherently lazy, I don’t check my campaigns as often as I should and it took several days for me to notice that my leads had completely dried up. When I did check, it was not completely clear to me what went wrong. I had zero impressions and no clicks. I mistakenly thought that I was being out bided on keywords and when I check the recommended bid, $10 seemed way out of line. After wasting a vast amount of time, because like most men I don’t stop to ask for directions, hence, I didn’t contact Google until I was well beyond frustrated. When I did I was not happy with their answer, but was more upset because they did not see it as their responsibility to contact me when they pulled the plug on my campaigns. I guess customer service only applies to the folks who use their service for free. But that is another story for another day. So what did I learn, have leads coming from as many sources as possible. That way if one dries up you still have leads coming in. I also learned to be more vigilant when it comes to monitoring my lead sources.