Archive for March, 2008

• Google Slap, Microsoft & Yahoo! Search Marketing

  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 [...]

  March 25th, 2008

• AdWords - Relevance - WTF?

  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. [...]

  March 24th, 2008

• AdWords Search History Permutation Victims

  Update
  2009/02 I can no longer detect Search History Permutation using the diagnostic tests that I previously used - I believe that this is no longer operating, or it has become more subtle in its effects.
  Original Article
  I was wrong - Search History Permutation probably isn’t the sole cause of problems. Amongst my clients, I can [...]

  March 20th, 2008

• Is AdWords Search History Permutation Fraudulent?

  Update
  2009/02 I can no longer detect Search History Permutation using the diagnostic tests that I previously used - I believe that this is no longer operating, or it has become more subtle in its effects.
  Original article
  My first article on Search History usage was experiential; you can do the searches yourself and see the strange [...]

  March 17th, 2008

• AdWords Search History Permutation - Short Form

  Update
  2009/02 I can no longer detect Search History Permutation using the diagnostic tests that I previously used - I believe that this is no longer operating, or it has become more subtle in its effects.
  Original Article
  Are you suffering from a lower CTR recently? Have your conversion rates declined? Have your impression rates declined, or [...]

  March 17th, 2008

• SEO vs PPC

  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 [...]

  March 16th, 2008

• GAP - Is It Worth It?

  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 [...]

  March 16th, 2008

• AdWords Died, 2008 - Rest In Peace

  (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 - and that has been supplemented by more observations, summarised in “AdWords Quality Score Changes To Correct A Design Defect?“).
  Google has completely lost track of their [...]

  March 11th, 2008

• Web Marketing In Context, 2003 Survey

  Most businesses follow the Kevin Costner “Field Of Dreams” visionary model for their website:
  “If You Build It, They Will Come”.
  Annoyingly, this model usually fails. Let’s have a look at how people think about their web marketing and why they end up either ravingly happy or cynical depressives about their efforts. Web Marketing, or Internet [...]

  March 10th, 2008

• Twitxr Social Networking Beta.

  I don’t usually cover new Social Networking apps. But, I’m an iPhone addict and I finally came across an easy to use posting tool that might reduce the barrier to use for me, enough to make it something that I might do. Easy to use, but a bit of a pig to install on the [...]

  March 4th, 2008