Archive for March, 2009

• Why Advertising Is Decreasing

  I read the most unutterable drivel in a TechCrunch article - “Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet“. There’s parts of the argument that I don’t have any personal experience with, but when looking at the bits that I do know about, I believe that the author, Eric Clemons, is just spewing nonsense. He points [...]

  March 23rd, 2009

• Google’s Economist Explains The Auction

  Clear description of the importance of managing AdWords Quality Score and the effect on the auction and placement from Google Chief Economist, Hal Varian. I had a chat with a couple of Google’s AdWords Ad Quality Tech Specialists last week, and the description of Quality Score in the 10 minute video massively simplifies what is [...]

  March 12th, 2009

• Who Benefits From Interest Based Adverts

  The existing AdWords Content Network is often a huge challenge for advertisers. This new interest based system should be a superb win for all involved.

  Internet users should see fewer annoying and pointless adverts
  Advertisers should get higher CTR and better conversion rates
  Publishers should better return on their real estate
  Google will improve per click revenue and [...]

  March 11th, 2009

• Recession - Killing Me Softly

  If the recession isn’t doing enough to kill your business, here’s our top list for self-inflicted wounds you can use to drive your website into the ground.
  1 - Ignore Other Opportunities
  You can appear on Google Map listings. In Image search. In Video search. On YouTube. Blog searches. Mobile search. News sites. News aggregation sites. [...]

  March 11th, 2009

• AdWords Customer Service Improvements

  Instead of prattling on about “Google Slaps”, the AdWords Help Forum Top Contributors did something to improve AdWords for all users, this week. We went on strike. We refused to answer some or all questions posed on the AdWords Help Forum, until Google addressed a badly handled customer service problem - the newly important “account [...]

  March 6th, 2009

• AdWords Angers Top Contributors

  Update: See AdWords Customer Service Improvements
  Google is abusing the voluntary user-to-user AdWords help forum as a cheap way to deliver poor customer service. I’m calling for AdWords Top Contributors to boycott answering specific classes of user question, or to abandon answering altogether. I’m asking for non-AdWords Top Contributors to apply pressure, or withdraw their voluntary [...]

  March 3rd, 2009

• FeedBurner, Privacy, SEO and Trends

  My apologies if you’ve just received an email with a six month old news-type response article to something daft that I’d just read. Last year, I wrote a piece about a criticism of SEO, called “SEO: Bullshit is Bullshit“. This morning, for opaque reasons, FeedBurner sent the email version of the article off to my [...]

  March 1st, 2009