'trust' Category

• Privacy and AdWords Extended Search Query Reports

  Good news – Google is allowing more insight to be gathered from AdWords Search Query Reports, by exposing more search queries to scrutiny. This reduces the need to use third party click redirectors or web analytics tools to extract search queries. However, there’s strangely spurious logic – or I’ve failed to grasp a fundamental point [...]

  May 23rd, 2009

• Google Helps US Small Businesses

  In yet another US-Centric move the world leader in search engines and search marketing offers a US-only initiative for small business. If I lived in the US, I’d be tolerably happy with this. Small businesses account for a large fraction of economic activity, and are often hard hit in a recession. However, the UK has [...]

  April 29th, 2009

• Search Engine Marketing 2009 Projections

  The main trends that will be visible in 2009: Google will struggle to retain revenues using a variety of techniques Searchers will spend more time browsing and convert after more clicks Online revenues will generally increase – but business margins will be squeezed Internet Theft Scandals – Click Fraud, Phishing and Account Theft Details and [...]

  January 5th, 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

• Social Network Marketing Experiments

  Regular readers of this blog will know that I tinker endlessly with why things work the way they do. My apologies if my latest experiment has come as an unpleasant surprise. I have a reasonably large email readership from that “Subscribe By Email” field to the right of the page, courtesy of FeedBurner. I adjusted [...]

  August 24th, 2008

• AdWords Phishing – Another Type Of Click Fraud?

  I now know what at least one of the scammers are doing. Screenshots of the fraudulent activity signature of this scammer are shown below. If you’ve clicked on a URL in an email apparently from Google, recently, then you might want to check your AdWords History – as shown below. If these international fraudsters have [...]

  July 2nd, 2008

• Is AdWords Search History Permutation Fraudulent?

  Update 2009/02 I can no longer detect Search History Permutation using the diagnostic tests that I previously used – I believe that this is no longer operating, or it has become more subtle in its effects. Original article My first article on Search History usage was experiential; you can do the searches yourself and see [...]

  March 17th, 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

• Anatomy of a Web Spam Attack

  We’ve recently watched spammers at work, from initial contact through to dropping a litter trail across a site. This is on one of our own sites, rather than a client site, so we’re happy to share what we’ve seen. Because this activity doesn’t involve client data, and is clearly activity that is not intended to [...]

  September 9th, 2007