Google AdWord's biggest problem

I'm going through my referer logs to see why my adword costs are so high and the answer is clear as day; spam sites.

Basically, someone sets up a site with some targetted key words and then puts it out to get people to come in and when they don't see any content, they click on an ad. Either that or they have someone click on the ad for them.

Either way, it's a waste of money. The problem? Unless you look at your referer logs, you have NO CLUE AT ALL where an ad click comes from. This is my biggest problem with adwords. Because Google will not give me the info, I have to try and get it myself.

To make it worse, Google seems to only give you like 10% of the referers. The excuse is that not all browsers give referer information. BS! If I'm displaying 100 ads a day, I expect at least 80% of the people to have a browser and system that will give me the referer. I expect to see where an ad is shown and be able to block it if it is not a place I want my ad shown.

And this is only if I expect to get the information through the referer. Google has a VERY GOOD idea as to where the ad was shown, who clicked it, and even what they were wearing at the time. Why can't I have that information? (except for the person's dressing habits)

And it gets even worse than that. When I asked Google to block my ads from oingo.com (which is now owned by Google), they went ahead and listed the domain in my block list but still show my ads on it. What site on it? A parked (i.e. spam) site.

In Google's defense, when I complained about something like this in the past they gave me a refund of a certain amount of money so at least they recognise the problem and want to be 'nice'. Personally, I'd rather have a Google based list of every site that shows my ads and/or every site that generated a click. If I'm spending a few hundred dollars a month on advertising, I'd like to be sure my money is being well spent.

And how in the world did one of my ColdFusion ads get on the site of Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante? I guess he just loves ColdFusion at heart. :)