05.13.08
Posted in Google at 10:00 am by Brandon Wirtz
I recently ran a campaign on Google Adwords Search and Content Network, which was a traffic building campaign. I use these partly to build new audience and partly because often I can run ads against words no one is buying. Everything was going great, until Google indexed the pages on the content network with my ads.
The ads look something like this:
PC Cheat Codes
Cheats for 1000’s of games
like crackdown
linktosite/get/gamename
And there are nearly 6000 of them for different games which my site has cheats for. Not all of them were priced high enough to run on Search, most of them weren’t priced high enough to run on the content network. But I was looking for cheap words.
Many of these a few days ago had 0 hits for the words "Cheats" and the Game title.
Day one things are glorious. I get about 200 extra visitors, I’m buying in at 2 cents a click, I’m making $9 CPM on the site, I’m buying traffic at $11 cpm, not cheap, but not awful.
Day Two: I notice that there are a lot of pages on the Internet with my ad text on it.
Day Three: None of the words which were running on the content network are affordable. The price has gone from 2cents to $1. Because there are now a bunch of sites with higher page rank with my keywords on them.
I have rarely had this problem in the past. And there may be times when you can exploit this to your advantage. If I have a phone number, this would be Amazing Free Advertising.
It also lends to some really great ideas for how to "Game" Adwords. Which would likely get you banned. Why run ads against your own page? Got a phone number to promote, run ads that point to the top hit for what ever you are advertising, run only on the content network.
Have a competitor who is kicking your butt? Run ads that say they suck and put those on the content network, now when people search for their name all of these ad hits will come up saying they suck.
You would think that if we aren’t allowed to modify Google’s ad code this wouldn’t happen. You would also think that Google would detect this and punish sites that were doing it.
Apparently your ads don’t have to always be presented the way you expect. In addition to your ads being converted to static text so they can run in Opposition to your site in search. You may find they are presented as jscript, but made to look not like an ad.
You don’t get to the top of the Adsense ladder by following the rules.
So am I exaggerating? A little. In a few days my ads will stop running because I won’t pay enough to keep my ads running, and in a few days after that those pages that had run those ads will stealing someone else’s ads, and my ads will start up again if I haven’t paused the campaign and the vicious cycle will start over.
Assuming that works out to 50% of the time, I’m only making this twice the deal it really is.
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05.08.08
Posted in Google, Microsoft, Responses, Search Engines, Technology News, Yahoo at 12:00 am by Brandon Wirtz
Microsoft is moving on to Facebook. Poor MSFT what are you thinking? Facebook isn’t getting rich on it’s ad strategy. If it was it wouldn’t have wanted your money the last time you invested in them. If you are shopping to compete with GOOG then quit looking at big players that aren’t competing, and start looking at little players who might if they had the money.
Despite agreeing with Scoble on the idea that the Google Model’s days are numbered, it is not because Social Sites like Facebook are going to replace them, it is because eventually people are not going to need to go looking, the tools will just know what you want.
I have been working on a Techmeme Style product that works off of your OPML file. Anyone can have their own Meme, bought the domain it is practically ready to launch. Only trouble, the CPU requirements are HUGE. Maybe I’ll convert it to run on Google’s servers…. Oh wait that makes Google Relevant again.
Robert is right the current model will become more like Techmeme and more like Mahalo.com and more like FaceBook… But Google is not going to sit there and do nothing. Google adapts and grows.
I can see all of the pieces being made ready to jump on any of us that are testing the waters, after WE figure out what works. Google doesn’t need to have a finished product just enough beta bits to make sure that whatever models start to look like they could work can be crushed.
Insert your favorite explicative, Google can crush me at any moment just by de-listing me, same for Mahalo. If Google said, "Hey Jason Calacanis your site is just a very pretty splog, or at least that is what we are going to claim so our stocks don’t fall on news that Techmeme’s crowd says you’re going to crush us in 3 years" well Mahalo revenue would drop 80% over night and the 3 years that it takes to recoup the cost of a post would now take 15. That would end the butt kicking.
I just found out about Google "Sets" which looks a lot like what I have been talking about for the last 3 months with figuring out what a set of words category is, so that you can tune the results contextually. If I know that the last 100 searches you did were about food, I know a Chili Dog is just a Chili Dog. If the last 100 searches you did were X rated I know that you are looking for something a bit grosser.
This is just one of the pieces that form the Lego’s that Google is building. And it is one of the public ones, we don’t get to see the ones they don’t care to share. Matt Cutts only tells us what it is in Google’s interest to tell us.
If you read my "rant" about Greatest Living American, you start to get where I’m going with this. This week the "right answer" to who is the Greatest Living American is "Brandon Wirtz" or "Steven Colbert". That is the only time it should be this. If my mom gives her 3rd graders the task of writing an essay on who they think the Greatest Living American is you don’t want them to write about Perry Como, Night of the Living Dead, or How to make grilled cheese because they used Mahalo. And I don’t want them to say it is me because they used Google And really Norman Borlaug may not be the "right" answer but it is the only answer I could find that wasn’t me or Steven.
Results that are free from the possibility of manipulation is part of the future of search. Results that are contextually relevant to the searcher is part of the future of search. Results that are contextually relevant to the events of the moment are part of the future of search.
When Oprah has someone on her show for the next 12 hours a perfect search engine would know that 90% of the people looking for that person wants to know about that person "through" Oprah. Similarly when "Don’t forget the Lyrics" is on searches for things that look very similar to words from a song are about a song, not about what ever the words are about. "Feet Down Below His Knee" is not about how one sprints, or trousers (isayhello gets this wrong too since I don’t have a large enough Lyric library to reference, but I get it right with a YouTube video).
Google Is starting to get this, as Two days ago above search results for Greatest Living American was a link to CNN’s article about the Colbert Webby. All of the points that I and Scoble make about the future of search, and what our "Dashboards for Life" will look like Google is building.
The people who aren’t getting this seemingly is Microsoft. They are in such a race to show they get it by cutting a check they are missing all of the small innovative companies that are making it work. I would encourage MSFT to buy Mahalo. (Jason if they cut you a check for $300 million I want 1% for putting the idea out there) Because Mahalo brings a piece of the Pie that is needed, Human summarized results. There is not enough CPU or a large enough database to classify things the way an army of volunteers/cheap labor can. Mahalo can take the 100 things each hour that people are looking for, and sort them, compile a headline, and find the source of the trend in record time, and if MSFT wants me to use Live.com as a Landing page that is part of what they need.
If Microsoft wants to by Techmeme, I would root them on. Gabe Rivera has proven that he can create Meme’s for various subjects, and I’m sure if someone paid him he could create 300 Meme’s that fit personality profiles for 80% of the people out there, and that would make them happy to start their day on a Microsoft site, and you know what most of those people’s search results could be filtered through the sites in their Meme.
I’m sorry I don’t support the Facebook buy. They just don’t know how to make people happy. I thought Facebook Apps had potential, but they are all such time wasters. I really wanted to like them. Stack on that Facebook doesn’t really know how to monetize their users, and I don’t see anything in Facebook that isn’t in LinkedIn. If LinkedIn goes the way of Facebook, I’m dropping it.
This is a response to:
Anders Bylund: Microsoft is probing Facebook’s merger interest
SmoothSpan Blog: Is Microsoft Playing Possum for Yahoo? It Could Be Much Worse!
Jim Goldman: Microsoft’s About Face With Facebook—Is It In Writing?
MG Siegler: The Microsoft buying Facebook rumors commence, again
Joel Evans: Is Microsoft still shopping?
Nicholas Carlson: Microsoft’s plan for Web growth, minus Yahoo and Facebook
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05.06.08
Posted in Google, Responses at 9:16 am by Brandon Wirtz
PR Web and CNN have sent the search term Greatest Living American to the top of the trends list, once again. As Colbert was just made Webby Person of the year and the press release claimed him to be Greatest Living American. Well not so fast my Bear Hating Foe! I earned that title Fair and Square, and so 3,000 people an hour are searching right now and finding my name, not yours at the top of the chart.
I am the Greatest Living American Search Engine Optimizer as well. So if you want to enjoy the rewards that come from a top ranking you should send an e-mail to Brandon at Xyhd.tv .
That said. I want to point out that doing the search on my search engine (isayhello.com) returns a more correct result, a great article from The Huffington Post about Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.
It then goes on to links about the race for Greatest Living American and Steven Colbert, because if you were searching today that is what you were really looking for. Not my name.
The race for Greatest Living American was part of why I started ISayHello.com . Search results should not be so easy to manipulate, and they should return what you were looking for, not what some one wants to show you.
Jonah Stein, Rand Fishkin, and even I, make our livings manipulating "The Google" for fun and profit. And we are the "good" guys. There are thousands of Black Hats that spend their day figuring out how to get the most traffic for terms so they can infect you with ad and spyware, or sell you herbal viagra.
As Scott Karp points out, there is too much of the same thing, and too many people competing to be at the top that don’t deserve to be. Everyone who wants to be on the A list has to cover all the top stories. And everyone who wants to climb off the B list has to out rank them. The result is that we end up getting top news results from XYHD.tv rather than the Huffington Post. Don’t get me wrong I think I add to the story, but I should be number 2 after you read the facts, you can read my OpEd on the topic.
Key Word Search is broken, and strictly computer generated search is broken. A hybrid is the future, and I’m working to get it there.
This is a response to:
Colbert wins ‘Webby Person of the Year’
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05.05.08
Posted in Advertising, Google, Microsoft, Search Engines, Yahoo at 10:26 am by Brandon Wirtz
I have to say that I thought buying Yahoo was the wrong move. Yahoo didn’t have an Adsense/Adwords product that was successful, their use of Adwords in order to raise their Search Engine Earnings is a testament to that. So what should Microsoft do?
1. Convert the Microsoft owned Building on Pear Street in Mountain View to be the first headquarters for Microsoft’s new Ad Product.
It has to be in Silicon Valley, and it would be better if it were NOT on the over crowded SVC campus, and there isn’t time to build a new campus. MSFT has this building and it is a nice size and walking distance to Microsoft SVC, and Google. Which is important because every time Google has a Blogger Event, or an Ad Expo, there needs to be one at Microsoft as well. Microsoft Culture doesn’t always merge well so finding a new home near, but not on an existing campus give the Acquisitions a better chance of bringing their expertise rather than being molded in to Microsofties too quickly.
2. Acquire Adsdaq. Adsdaq is the best non-Google banner ad company out there. There are bigger ones, but Adsdaq has a simple intuitive UI, that makes sense, and with MSFT behind it could achieve the necessary volume to be a true success. I don’t believe entirely in the name your own price ad serving model, but it would be a benefit to MSFT early on because it would allow the expectation that you would get less than 100% fill rate, which would allow time to grow ad inventory to meet demand.
3. Acquire Compete. I don’t even like Compete, but there are a lot of people who trust it more than Alexa for traffic analysis, and that is an important component. Microsoft is going to need to build a better than Google Analytics tools quickly, and it seems like Compete has the biggest jump in this space.
4. Acquire ISayhello.com . Microsoft needs a deep understanding of not just keywords, but keyword relationships, the ability to mine data quickly and efficiently, and ISayHello.com brings that to the table. Until there is an Ad for every keyword on the planet Microsoft will need to be able to do contextual matches against categories, content types, and working out those relationships will also allow Microsoft to do something Google doesn’t. Let you easily decide if you want to run ads on Pages that distinctly say your product sucks. With out the ability to determine the actual meaning of the words on the page you could very well be spending money to advertise on sites that are bashing your product, already selling your product, both of these scenarios should be up to the ad buyer.
5. Don’t Force Dev, on a Microsoft Platform. It should get moved eventually, but time is critical, and many of the companies that are going to need to get bought won’t be running ASP and MSSQL. Encourage Flexibility, and work on building API’s to connect what is out there to Microsoft Platforms. This will do do things, Shorten time to product, and make creation of tools for sale to end users easier. There will be a time in the near future when people will be ready Microsoft Ad Server, for managing their inventory of In House ads, and their ads provided by third parties. Knowing how to talk to anything and everything will be part of building that.
6. Get Scoble Back. You don’t even have to hire him full time, but Scoble brings legitimacy to bloggers. Microsoft needs to be the exclusive ad provider for all of Scoble’s projects. While they are at it, they need to get Dave Winer, Om Malik, Fake Steve Jobs, and Perez Hilton. And for good measure the Technorati Top 100 by Authority and by Favorites.
7. Be an Omnimedia Company. Create products that don’t exist now, that allow for Microsoft to be a "One Stop Shop" for advertising. Cut a deal with Clearchannel, along with other radio stations, PBS and NPR. Yes PBS. Every time there is a "This show sponsored in part by" there is an opportunity to advertise. And the Cost is cheap, and the ads are simple so they are easy to build. Every small town newspaper on the planet, even if it is just to sell classifieds. A reseller program for Adam’s outdoor. You get the picture. The idea should be that every mom and pop shop should be able to go to one place and get any type of ad they need.
8. Build an MCSE equivalent for Advertising. By creating lots of local experts Microsoft can create a partner network to off load support and make the ad buying experience more personal than any of the existing products. Many Graphic Designers would be happy to create ads and manage them, many companies that handle media buys would like to be able to say they were a certified partner. This helps customers know who to trust.
9. Offer payment as products from Microsoft and Partners. A lot of "small fish" will take all year to get $100 from Google. So why not let the Game Blogger get a game at the Microsoft Employee price every so often. Halo 3 for $20, and Blue Dragon for $20 is a great incentive to the High School Kid who wants to get in to Blogging, but is going to take 3 years to get a check from Google.
10. Allow the use of Ad revenue to buy more Ads on the network. I hate having to take my Adsense dollars into my bank accounts so that I can put them back in Adwords. Save some money and just let me pull from one into the other.
11. Maintain Transparency. The most irksome thing about Google for ad buyers and ad sellers, is that you don’t know what commission Google is getting. So are you paying $1 for a click that cost 10 cents? Are you being paid a penny for a click that Google charge a quarter for? I’m confident Google moves the slider around based on the volume of your buy, and the volume of your sell. But it is hard to trust Google. You know you will get paid but it is hard to anticipate your income because the CPM’s seem to flux with where Google thinks it needs to get its earnings.
12. Remember the Little Guy. Google got to the size it is buy taking the big and the small. You can advertise with as little as a dollar, and you can get paid as little as $30 a year. Being a success means growing with your customers.
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04.13.08
Posted in Google at 9:07 pm by Brandon Wirtz
If you are going to provide an essential service you can’t have down time. I can’t recall as long of an outage of my Cellular carrier as Grandcentral has had.
Sorry Google, downtime is bad.
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03.01.08
Posted in Google at 1:37 am by Brandon Wirtz
CTR’s are down 7% Google says that this is because Google has "Improved" the quality of the ads that are returned when users do a search. If that were true then CTR’s would be up because Ads would get served to more qualified better targeted customers. But they aren’t.
Searches are up 9% and blog traffic has risen with them. But many of us have seen our CPM’s fall steadily. More traffic and 5-15% less money.
If ads were better targeted, Google’s revenue would increase because you would get more clicks based on being more relevant, and they would be able to charge more per 1000 impressions because they would serve the best ads, and even if they didn’t get any more money per click they would get more clicks.
What we are seeing instead, is more Pay Per Impression ads. Ads that don’t need to be clicked to be of benefit to the advertiser.
I have had to take to blocking these types of ads as competitive to keep my CPM up.
I can’t say I haven’t done similar things with the ads I buy. I cram them full of the information I need to get a sale, and the information the user needs to not be a window shopper.
For example:
Buy a Widget
Our Widgets are the best click to see them now!
This type of ad gets clicked. But the below ad gets more sales per click.
Widget $29.99
Our best widget is now 50% cheaper and can be shipped overnight
This ad gets clicked less, but has a much higher sell-thru.
I’m ok with either of these running on my site, they are "Fair" enough.
What I dislike is the ads that are like this.
Get $10 off Widgets
Call Us now at 1877-4AWidget and use offer code DIDNTCLICK
These types of ads monopolize my site with $2 click numbers, but no reason for a user to click.
As Google tries to ratchet up its earnings it works harder and harder to raise it’s commissions by helping customers optimize their sell through it must balance what it does to publishers. Online advertising has plenty of room to grow, but the way to increase profits is not to do more with CPM ads, it is to remove more of the spam blogs.
Here is the scenario that every Splogger knows…
Write a post with spammy text, Google Bomb it until it glows, it sits there in the top 10 results for "Widgets" and gets 1000 hits a day. The site has no content, it just "pretends" to. And it has no outbound links. So a user just blindly clicks on anything that might take them to the next place on their search. The Splog gets a click no matter what the ad is for, doesn’t matter if it is relevant, the Ad Buyer is out a few cents, and everyone but the splogger loses.
Search result ads don’t suffer this the exact same way, but they do suffer. If you are willing to pay you can run an ad against anything, even things that you have no business advertising against. If you set your Cost per Click to $5 you can run an ad for your 900 number fortune telling service against any number of keywords. Using the ad I outlined with the phone number and setting your daily budget to extremely high numbers and you will see CTR’s that are less than 1 hundredth of 1% but will have an amazingly low CPM.
Whether Google will admit it or not Adsense is broken, not so broken that they aren’t making insane amounts of money, but enough that there is a lot of money to be made buy bending its rules. And a lot of money to be lost if you don’t know who’s breaking the rules and how.
7% fewer clicks on 9% more traffic = 16% fewer clicks per thousand users.
Want to make a small fortune? Buy ads on words that there are no Ad Search results for, and sell something. Or just arbitrage some clicks.
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