'intent' Category

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  (This article has been superceded, as I’ve dug into the details more – I offer an assessment of who is affected, and how much, in AdWords Search History Permutation – and that has been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

  March 11th, 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, 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

• Click Fraud, Google AdWords and gclid

  A tardy response to Matt Cutts posting and Shuman Ghosemajumder‘s joining in the debate… I don’t see some important stuff in Google’s approach to this issue. Maybe I’m selectively vision impaired. Or maybe I read too many other reports about naughtiness on the net. Update 2009-09 – you can now use Google’s Webmaster Console (Settings) [...]

  July 16th, 2007

• Turning visitors into buyers – whose shoes do you wear?

  Chances are, if you are reading this, you’ve got a problem with turning site visitors into buyers. You’ve probably made one big mistake… It’s common, and almost all sites suffer from this to a greater or lesser extent. It affects shops, banks, consultants and pretty much everything that anyone tries to sell… And it seems [...]

  May 29th, 2007

• AdSense and Behavioural Targeting

  Matt Cutts has elliptically proposed that AdSense is a form of Behavioural Targeting. Or, maybe he’s proposing something else… Hmm. Let’s look at that. The proposition represents that AdSense is to Behavioural Targeting as Hydrogen Bonds are to Van Der Waals Forces. While both forces arise from the intermolecular behaviour of electrical charge, the Hydrogen [...]

  April 26th, 2007

• Rev A: SEO, Game Theory and Intrinsically Corruptible Systems

  I’m pretty sure that I can see a rising interest in, and reasons for, dislodging Google’s search and search advertising dominance. However, the causes are complex and the way in which it would happen are even more subject to unpredictable accidents. I’ve now written this article twice, with different perspectives… And I couldn’t think of [...]

  April 21st, 2007

• Twelve ways, plus a bit, less a few.

  Interesting click fraud chorus starting up here. This thought provoking piece, The 12 Ways of Click Fraud by Mike O’Krongli, is a response to the Andy Beal/Shuman Ghosemajumder articles. See also Andrew Goodman’s piece and his other one. I’m not entirely convinced by all of Mikes’ arguments. In the interests of trying to refine the [...]

  December 15th, 2006

• Google Writes About Click Fraud

  Interesting article, Google, Click Fraud and Invalid Clicks about Google and click fraud, by Matt Cutt’s colleague Shuman Ghosemajumder. There’s at least two categories that I don’t see addressed in the article. Maybe I read it too quickly. Twice. Identifiable robots. Some spiders identify themselves not just by behaviour but in the user agent and [...]

  December 14th, 2006

• Misleading advertising by Precision Marketing, perhaps.

  What does “Updated database offers DIY lovers” mean for you? A list of inflatable adult toys you can make at home, or a mailing list of home improvement enthusiasts? You have to be so careful with language to avoid double meanings or unintended interpretations. This example came in some email offering us mailing lists… but [...]

  November 7th, 2006