Archive for August, 2007

• Affiliates and Top Position

  I was uncertain what effect the new algorithm changes would have on affiliates. I think I’ve now uncovered what is happening. If you aren’t an affiliate, or don’t run affiliates, this may appear to be of little interest. Bear with me, as I think this article illuminates some important principles with AdWords. Ignoring affiliates, for [...]

  August 28th, 2007

• Top Position – Bidders Beware

  Whew! My accounts are mostly set to UK time (inherited from previous account administration). So I have US spend that is now two hours after my midnight, and can clearly see the effects of the new Top Position pricing model. It means that *Phrase* match costs are going through the roof. Now that is not [...]

  August 23rd, 2007

• Google, Trust, Content Match, Placement Reports

  [Google now offer on/off control over domain parks, error pages, 404 pages, and more - this article is kept for historical purposes, only] A respected peer, Richard Ball, often writes about distribution fraud, and the waste of advertising funds on Google’s domain parking. I have some evidence to back up his claim that advertising on [...]

  August 17th, 2007

• Top Position: Higher CTR, Higher MinCPC.

  An article on Search Engine Land adds more information to the flimsy FAQ. So the top position is supposed to have a higher (unpublished and incomparable) CTR as a criterion, and a different (unpublished and incomparable) MinCPC as the qualification to appear. The auction still seems to be built on the generalised second price model. [...]

  August 10th, 2007

• Google Top Position Pricing Motivational Analysis

  Google announced yesterday (2007/08/08) that the pricing system for placing adverts above organic search results is to change. What effect will this have on advertisers and other Google stakeholders, and what reasons might Google have for doing so? As you might expect, a first pass analysis suggests that Google is using this to increase revenue [...]

  August 9th, 2007

• Work/Life Balance: Paper Planes

  We sponsored a student for a Masters by Research at Cranfield University last year, to do some work on using AI for improving content match for advertisers. I keep an eye open for what Cranfield gets involved in and ended up taking part in a competition on their recent Open Day showing how they contribute [...]

  August 2nd, 2007