Some time ago, I started a review comparing Yahoo!Search Marketing (previously Overture and previously Goto.com, but here known as “Y!SM”) with Google AdWords. Of course, Y!SM, which had been hanging fire on a promising new interface, Panama, promptly rolled the new stuff out. I claim no impact on this, just remark on an accident of […]

I’ve spotted several prank postings. My favourite is from Richard Ball, offering a spoof interview about Google use of domain parks. A few others:

Project Virgle - The most surprising thing was the test result that described me as normal. My wife is convinced that I’m from another planet, and it is much further away […]

While I was driving to work, I began to wonder if the recent changes to Google AdWords, damaging a good many online businesses, have more to do with Microsoft’s hostile bidding for Yahoo!, than to do with advertisers. Google’s overarching significance is because of the organic search results. Most searches are not intended to find […]

I’ve been following a thread by a frustrated would-be advertiser in the AdWords Help Forum, with some interest. He’s obviously spotted that Google have potentially created a niche, by suppressing so many adverts when they think that the paid search results are less appropriate. The search is “No Country For Old Men DVD” or similar. […]

I was wrong - Search History Permutation probably isn’t the sole cause of problems. Amongst my clients, I can see Search History Permutation (where the words in the current and previous search query are combined to generate new searches, and adverts are conscripted that the searcher wasn’t lookiing for). However, other clients are also having […]

My first article on Search History usage was experiential; you can do the searches yourself and see the strange results. This article offers a different type of explanation with a lot more detailed argument. It raises the question for me - is Google’s use of AdWords Search History to generate adverts for unrequested keywords, fraudulent? […]

Are you suffering from a lower CTR recently? Have your conversion rates declined? Have your impression rates declined, or suddenly boomed? I think I know why. Here’s a simple description of the problem that Google has caused. I’ve a longer article, with more of the background.
At some point (I don’t have an exact date and […]

Andrew Goodman has an interesting start on a discussion of the relative merits of PPC and SEO. I think he’s found an worthwhile thread, but I believe that there’s a different type of analysis to be usefully applied. It is that clicks have different meanings; here is one model for looking at what clicks mean.
I […]

About six months ago, I re-sat my Google Accredited Professional exam. I took the first one just a few months after the program was started, in 2005. Having taken the exam twice, I’m unhappy. I wouldn’t trust a Search Marketer with only a GAP, to do the right things. This is partly because the exam […]

(This article has been superceded, as I’ve dug into the details more - I offer an assessment of who is affected, and how much, in AdWords Search History Permutation).
Google has completely lost track of their mission, and is busy destroying the value of AdWords. Last summer, Google said it would be rolling out search history […]