Comments for Merjis Internet Marketing Blog http://blog.merjis.com Effective Internet Marketing Strategy and Technique Through Experiments, Measurement and Audit Mon, 12 May 2008 09:00:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.12-alpha Comment on AdWords Died, 2008 - Rest In Peace by Scott Million http://blog.merjis.com/2008/03/11/adwords-died-2008-rest-in-peace/#comment-52854 Fri, 09 May 2008 19:17:44 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2008/03/11/adwords-died-2008-rest-in-peace/#comment-52854 Thanks for your comments and the article. I've been using article marketing and would like to get into Pay-Per-Click buy am facing some serious information overload. Do any of you experienced PPC marketers have a book or post to recommend? Should I "Stay Away From Google?!" Thanks, Scott Thanks for your comments and the article. I’ve been using article marketing and would like to get into Pay-Per-Click buy am facing some serious information overload.

Do any of you experienced PPC marketers have a book or post to recommend?

Should I “Stay Away From Google?!”

Thanks,

Scott

]]> Comment on Click Fraud, Google AdWords and gclid by Mark http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-52684 Thu, 08 May 2008 09:00:13 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-52684 Hi All, I'm pretty new to this search marketing, so forgive me if this is a silly question. I use affiliate marketing to generate revenue for my web site (Getting paid when per sale for Experian & Equifax credit reports etc.). One of the affiliate marketing companies now captures all referall details (Yahoo / Overture id's, keywords etc. & Googles gclid). With the Yahoo information, I can easily identify which keywords have successfully converted for me. Is there a way for me to find out which particular ppc keyword the gclid actually relates to in the first instance? This would really help me to work smarter with my ppc budget, and evaluate where my profit is actually coming from Many Thanks, Mark Hi All,

I’m pretty new to this search marketing, so forgive me if this is a silly question.

I use affiliate marketing to generate revenue for my web site (Getting paid when per sale for Experian & Equifax credit reports etc.).

One of the affiliate marketing companies now captures all referall details (Yahoo / Overture id’s, keywords etc. & Googles gclid).

With the Yahoo information, I can easily identify which keywords have successfully converted for me.

Is there a way for me to find out which particular ppc keyword the gclid actually relates to in the first instance?

This would really help me to work smarter with my ppc budget, and evaluate where my profit is actually coming from

Many Thanks,
Mark

]]> Comment on Google AdWords Conversion Tracking - The Good, The Bad and The Rest by Xtradosh http://blog.merjis.com/2006/09/29/google-adwords-conversion-tracking-the-good-the-bad-and-the-rest/#comment-52596 Wed, 07 May 2008 15:55:36 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2006/09/29/google-adwords-conversion-tracking-the-good-the-bad-and-the-rest/#comment-52596 Does anyone know if Google Conversion Tracking can be used to track Feedburner E-Mail Subscription sign ups? I want to use PPC to promote my blog so I need to track how many people are signing up to the RSS feeds in order to calculate my RSS Subscriber CPA. Ant Does anyone know if Google Conversion Tracking can be used to track Feedburner E-Mail Subscription sign ups?

I want to use PPC to promote my blog so I need to track how many people are signing up to the RSS feeds in order to calculate my RSS Subscriber CPA.

Ant

]]> Comment on Pride goeth before a fall by Success http://blog.merjis.com/2008/01/11/pride-goeth-before-a-fall/#comment-52549 Wed, 07 May 2008 06:47:34 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2008/01/11/pride-goeth-before-a-fall/#comment-52549 Jeremy you are right on the money with this. Blogs and blogging have been an incredible way to gain exposure since 2005 and this has grown in popularity exponentially. It is now very difficult (but not impossible) to get a new conventional web site a high ranking in the SE's. The problem in the future of course is that there will be so many blogs that the same ranking problem will apply to them. Any thoughts? Regards Graham Jeremy you are right on the money with this. Blogs and blogging have been an incredible way to gain exposure since 2005 and this has grown in popularity exponentially.

It is now very difficult (but not impossible) to get a new conventional web site a high ranking in the SE’s. The problem in the future of course is that there will be so many blogs that the same ranking problem will apply to them.

Any thoughts?

Regards

Graham

]]> Comment on Click Fraud, Google AdWords and gclid by Dave Lineman / ClickTrue.net http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-52463 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:46:26 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-52463 Too add to this thread about click quality and click fraud, our company has been looking at this for many months as well. Advertisers are seeing an overall increase in volume and lowering of quality across the board. What we are seeing is that the obvious "click farms" are giving way to a large group of sites on the "official" partner networks from Google and Yahoo. We have a system that immediately "crawls" a web site as soon as you receive a click from it. While this won't eliminate click fraud, it allows people to almost immediately detect suspect clicks and quickly block these sites. Web 2.0 style voting allows advertisers to benefit from the voting and blocking of other advertisers. Until Google and Yahoo dramatically increase their scrutiny of new sites, this is the best way we have seen to help stem the tide. Too add to this thread about click quality and click fraud, our company has been looking at this for many months as well. Advertisers are seeing an overall increase in volume and lowering of quality across the board. What we are seeing is that the obvious “click farms” are giving way to a large group of sites on the “official” partner networks from Google and Yahoo. We have a system that immediately “crawls” a web site as soon as you receive a click from it. While this won’t eliminate click fraud, it allows people to almost immediately detect suspect clicks and quickly block these sites. Web 2.0 style voting allows advertisers to benefit from the voting and blocking of other advertisers. Until Google and Yahoo dramatically increase their scrutiny of new sites, this is the best way we have seen to help stem the tide.

]]> Comment on Click Fraud, Google AdWords and gclid by Jeremy Chatfield http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-51308 Fri, 02 May 2008 09:38:24 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-51308 @Nancy - IME, this affects a small fraction of users. It is findable, and fixable, by Google. It is worrying that autotagging does seem to be enabled without positive action, and that automatically enabling autotagging without a check by Google that it is safe, can destroy any value that you might have gained from advertising. I'm reasonably certain that automatically enabling content match, "edgy content" pages and low quality domain parks accounts for more profit to Google than auto-enabling autotags. Since you can't use gclid tags, and you probably don't have any other tags on the destination URL, you won't be able to positively identify whether visitors arrive from Google AdWords - when you have Content Match enabled you may see a large fraction of visitors arrive from sites that are not Google owned. Given that you have had gclid problems, you may well see reduced visitor counts. If you still see reduced counts after disabling autotagging then there's probably a different problem - Google is usually *very* good about delivering paid clicks. The main question with Google should be the quality of the click, rather than the volume. I have cross verified hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of clicks over the years, and delivery is simply not a significant problem. @Nancy - IME, this affects a small fraction of users. It is findable, and fixable, by Google. It is worrying that autotagging does seem to be enabled without positive action, and that automatically enabling autotagging without a check by Google that it is safe, can destroy any value that you might have gained from advertising.

I’m reasonably certain that automatically enabling content match, “edgy content” pages and low quality domain parks accounts for more profit to Google than auto-enabling autotags.

Since you can’t use gclid tags, and you probably don’t have any other tags on the destination URL, you won’t be able to positively identify whether visitors arrive from Google AdWords - when you have Content Match enabled you may see a large fraction of visitors arrive from sites that are not Google owned. Given that you have had gclid problems, you may well see reduced visitor counts.

If you still see reduced counts after disabling autotagging then there’s probably a different problem - Google is usually *very* good about delivering paid clicks. The main question with Google should be the quality of the click, rather than the volume. I have cross verified hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of clicks over the years, and delivery is simply not a significant problem.

]]> Comment on Click Fraud, Google AdWords and gclid by Nancy http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-50283 Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:11:44 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-50283 Additional note --I forgot to mention that both my hit counter and my stats at 123count.com show fewer than 1/4 of the hits (on just one of my landing pages) than google has charged me for since I put that page up. Additional note –I forgot to mention that both my hit counter and my stats at 123count.com show fewer than 1/4 of the hits (on just one of my landing pages) than google has charged me for since I put that page up.

]]> Comment on Click Fraud, Google AdWords and gclid by Nancy http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-50279 Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:02:30 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/16/click-fraud-google-adwords-and-gclid/#comment-50279 I found this page when searching for the "gclid" code info. I was doing his because I realized that for weeks now, I have had no business from my google ppc advertising and yet they are charging me more than ever. When looking at some server info from my backroom at bluehost, I discovered that people were receiving a 404 page not found message and the links they were going to were my website link with the gclid code tacked on to the end. So then I did searches on google that pulled up my ppc ads and when I clicked on them, sure enough--page not found and the links in the address bar had that code tacked onto the end. I won't bore you with all the details except to say that altho Google is quick to suspend my ads when my website is down, they clearly don't notice when their own codes debilitate the link. After finding your article I discovered the feature of autotagging (which I had never heard of) and went into my google adwords account and sure enough it had been enabled. I disabled it and now the links are working fine. But, Google owes me hundreds of dollars...and I didn't set that autotag to on...so who did? I recently read a NY Times report on Googles high profits.. could this be why? Because my business had tanked..I went in and added new search words and upped my bids etc. etc.....all the while, people were clicking on my ppc ads and going nowhere. This is not good. I found this page when searching for the “gclid” code info. I was doing his because I realized that for weeks now, I have had no business from my google ppc advertising and yet they are charging me more than ever. When looking at some server info from my backroom at bluehost, I discovered that people were receiving a 404 page not found message and the links they were going to were my website link with the gclid code tacked on to the end. So then I did searches on google that pulled up my ppc ads and when I clicked on them, sure enough–page not found and the links in the address bar had that code tacked onto the end. I won’t bore you with all the details except to say that altho Google is quick to suspend my ads when my website is down, they clearly don’t notice when their own codes debilitate the link. After finding your article I discovered the feature of autotagging (which I had never heard of) and went into my google adwords account and sure enough it had been enabled. I disabled it and now the links are working fine. But, Google owes me hundreds of dollars…and I didn’t set that autotag to on…so who did? I recently read a NY Times report on Googles high profits.. could this be why? Because my business had tanked..I went in and added new search words and upped my bids etc. etc…..all the while, people were clicking on my ppc ads and going nowhere. This is not good.

]]> Comment on AdWords Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) by Marketing Articles http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/09/adwords-dynamic-keyword-insertion-dki/#comment-49214 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:23:46 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2007/07/09/adwords-dynamic-keyword-insertion-dki/#comment-49214 Powerful post! Thanks for this very impressive write ups. Right now I'm on the process of improving my marketing strategies. -Jan Powerful post! Thanks for this very impressive write ups. Right now I’m on the process of improving my marketing strategies.

-Jan

]]> Comment on Spam in Comments, Unattributed Content by Jeremy Chatfield http://blog.merjis.com/2008/02/07/spam-in-comments-unattributed-content/#comment-48054 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:56:55 +0000 http://blog.merjis.com/2008/02/07/spam-in-comments-unattributed-content/#comment-48054 I don't use captcha because it, and other techniques are intrusive. Making life harder for real users, while failing to significantly add costs to spammers is the wrong answer, IMO. The elegant design solution is to make life easy for real commenters, and preferably computationally hard but at least uneconomic for spammers. I use Akismet, which comes closest to meeting that design goal - it offers no obstacle to real commenters, and stops spammers from using this resource. There was no single point - there were a group of points, all related to spam, the reasons why there is spam, and the effects that it has on internet marketing. I don’t use captcha because it, and other techniques are intrusive. Making life harder for real users, while failing to significantly add costs to spammers is the wrong answer, IMO.

The elegant design solution is to make life easy for real commenters, and preferably computationally hard but at least uneconomic for spammers. I use Akismet, which comes closest to meeting that design goal - it offers no obstacle to real commenters, and stops spammers from using this resource.

There was no single point - there were a group of points, all related to spam, the reasons why there is spam, and the effects that it has on internet marketing.

]]>