'adwords' Category

• AdWords Search History Permutation - Short Form

  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 […]

  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  (This article has been superceded, as I’ve dug into the details more - I offer an assessment of who is affected, and how much, in AdWords Search History Permutation).
  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 […]

  March 11th, 2008

• Google GeoTargeting 2008

  Since I did the research for my last description of Google’s GeoTargeting in AdWords, things have changed. Searches that used to yield only nationally targeted adverts are now getting adverts that are targeted to city level. Advertising to mobile phones has been promoted hard by Google - so what happens there?
  City and Regional Targeting
  In January […]

  February 26th, 2008

• Automating Content Network Management - Part 1

  About three years ago (2005), we started efforts to automatically improve performance of the AdWords Content Network, for advertisers. We were hoping to develop a product, but we were also doing some research to see how things worked and what lessons we could learn. This is intended to be part 1 of a multipart article, […]

  February 12th, 2008

• Spam in Comments, Unattributed Content

  This article was triggered by a possibly spammy comment, and lead to investigating the quality of the site that was offered in the link. Bizarrely, it leads to further reflections on Google, and the Content Network. I struggle to make the Content Network work for my clients, at a reasonable ROI, and Google itself turns […]

  February 7th, 2008

• Apples, not Turtles

  This article was triggered by unreliable internet connections, especially after upgrading to Apple’s latest Mac OS X release, Leopard. It’s a reflection on Brand, the Pareto Principle, and Perception, which is why it ties, strangely, to Internet Marketing.
  There’s an almost certainly apocryphal story that someone was presenting cosmology to a non-scientific audience. At the […]

  January 30th, 2008

• Google - Doing Less Evil

  I frequently hold forth here that Google abuses the real source of its’ wealth - advertisers. The “Do No Evil” mantra is applied to users, but Google does horrible things to advertisers, remorselessly. After years of criticism from Richard Ball and me on the AdWords Help Forum, and joined more recently by other voices, Google […]

  January 28th, 2008

• AdWords Search Query Reports

  Quite a few people have written about using the fairly new Search Query Reports, and the sometimes surprising ways in which Google can extend Broad Match. Here’s another insight into AdWords. Look at the first two clips of screenshots, and notice that the impression volume reported is radically differently on keyword search.
  This first screen […]

  January 14th, 2008