'MSN' Category

• 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

• Microsoft and Yahoo - Read Him, Not Me.

  I’ve just been pointed to a masterful article about the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo.
  You know, I thought I’d written in below, about how a service company (Yahoo) and a product company (MS) would have integration problems - an issue I’ve seen before in startups where competent managers in one type of operation failed to […]

  February 8th, 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

• Pointlessly Ranking High In SERPS

  Lijit is a useful tool, and so is the new-ish Google property, FeedBurner. Between them, they describe the searches that lead people to this blog. Looking at the searches that lead people here, provides some insight into how search engines determine rank, and the techniques that SEOs use.
  As of the day this article was […]

  January 9th, 2008

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

  This is the other article on the End Of Life As We Know It. See also “Rev A“, published previously.
  A recent posting by Matt Cutts to invite reporting of paid links to Google set me thinking. One thought train lead to a fairly predictable (for me) posting. The other has lead into some stranger […]

  April 24th, 2007

• Click Fraud Buzz Will Grind On

  What is click fraud? Is it right that the search engines really define the industry meaning of click fraud? What if the search engines are complicit in reducing advertising ROI? What oversight exists? Could an advertiser or agency tell, or do anything about it?

  January 26th, 2007

• Free search engine listing

  Search engines return two sets of results, for the most part. One section, often called “Sponsored Links” are adverts paid for by the advertiser and usually payment is made each time that someone clicks on the advert. The other section is free listings. This is the list of sites that, in the opinion of the […]

  September 22nd, 2006