'content match' Category

• 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 [...]

  March 11th, 2009

• Google Throws Away The Rules, Again

  Google’s user base may be built on high reputation with organic search visitor volume, but that doesn’t prevent the search giant from leading users a merry dance in the pursuit of profit. Here’s a real world example. I’ve taken this from a real Google Account, with real web analytics data. I’ve concealed the precise search [...]

  October 29th, 2008

• Google’s Approach To Click Fraud – 2007

  Well, I’m a year late finding this PDF about Click Fraud, ROI and Advertiser Response by Kourosh Gharachorloo of Google. I was doing a periodic scan to see if anyone else has published how to interpret the autotagged gclid in AdWords. It’s nice to see that my old article anticipated many of the arguments – [...]

  October 18th, 2008

• Spectacle Recycling, Content Match And MFA

  Part of what we do is SEO and conversion improvement, so I tend to take a close look at other sites that rank well in organic search, to see how they are constructed and whether they work only for the site owner, or work for the visitor too. That was thrown into highlight this week [...]

  September 28th, 2008

• Does AdWords Starter Edition Define Evil?

  Google has a pretty good reputation built on Organic Search results and a well known corporate rule “You Can Make Money Without Doing Evil“. However, Google’s behaviour towards advertisers appears to run from a different rule book, in which that rule is absent. This apparent reduction in ethics now seems to be coming back to [...]

  September 13th, 2008

• Google, AdWords, April Fools Day Humour

  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 [...]

  April 3rd, 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

• Microsoft + Yahoo = Opportunity

  Microsoft and Yahoo will doubtless want to capitalise on their current successes. Yahoo’s increasing Display Ad business is interesting. If they can use stuff like the targeting piloted by Microsoft AdCenter, and improve the control and measurement systems, they can take away Google’s toys…. and advertisers. In the UK, Google has over 80% of search [...]

  February 1st, 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