The Prehensile Long Tail
Maybe it’s not 98% (did he really claim this?), but it’s at least 20% as with the old 80/20 rule. And even at that level why dismiss such a big chunk?
At that long end of the tail, you have less competition. Think in terms of SEO: “shoes” vs. “buy men’s nike air max online.” The latter is an example of the long tail and much much easier to rank for than “shoes”
Would you rather have a visitor that says “i’m just browsing for shoes” or “i’m looking to buy nike air max’s in size 10 from this store”. duh. conversions are going to be exponentially higher for the more detailed phrase. Those people are much further along in the buying process. Dan Boberg had a great slide back at Orlando pubcon that I wish I could find online. I hear Yahoo has an ebook that has all that data, but I’m yet to find it.
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The Click Fraud Solution for lazy people
do nothing.
The CEO of search stud Google is relying on theory to combat his biggest threat to his company’s main only real revenue stream. Google never ceases to amaze at what they’ll provide for guidance to an industry craving it.
Click fraud rears its’ ugly head every few months and lawsuits seem to be coming much more frequently. This is a pot that is starting to boil and unless the masses are put at ease it might boil over something fierce.
My three big issues with this are:
1. Adwords advertisers are really not as savvy as you think.
Many will not come close to understanding that a script is capable of clicking on their ad and that the script probably won’t complete a transaction. Google is reaching out to get more advertisers - the mom & pops - and these are especially the people they are going to be expecting to regulate their own spending to account for fraud.
2. Google is benefitting from the fraud.
Click fraud is NOT a “cost of doing business.” Retail companies like wal-mart or target have a real number associated with things like shoplifting. This is truly a “cost” to them. If advertisers pay less for more volume that includes click fraud it doesn’t really matter to Google since they make up for it on the volume side of things. This is a revenue of doing business for them. They win either way. The only loser is the less sophisticated advertiser that isn’t able to track that they are getting a lot of fraud through some of their spend. Another way they are benefitting is by providing analytics tools to those less sophisticated advertisers. You can’t track it well enough to know? Oh, well here, use this…nevermind that we get all your data, now you at least know how much you SHOULD be bidding. I don’t like the road this goes down one bit.
3. Would you base your revenue model on an economic theory?
I love economics. I think it’s fascinating. But it’s the type of thing that can be debated and debated forever. You can’t have your perfect market anywhere. There are too many variables to be saying everything will all work out because of a basic economic principle. With that I add the Click Fraud Do Nothing Solution to the “sounds good in theory” list:
- Affirmative Action
- Linux
- “Made In the USA”
- College education
- OpenOffice.org
- Phones that play MP3’s
- Global warming
- War on Terror
- Farm subsidies
- Snow
- Online voting
- Social Security
- Domestic beer
- Any food or beverage with Light in its name
- Any DVR that isn’t a TiVo
- Bars where if you drink every color without standing up from the bar you ge the drinks free
- Similar: Super Burger or Steak meal challenge
- Multitasking
- DVD players in family vehicles
- No Child Left Behind
- A little nookie in a hot tub
*thanks to Mr. BimmerGeek for some of these
Speaking @ Seattle AdClub
come and say hi!
http://www.adclubseattle.com/pencil/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=69
I’ll be talking about SEO, PPC, and other online marketing options for advertisers big & small
Adwords Quality Score Irrelevant?
I might be one of the few that doesn’t have to complain about the mountain of inactive keywords, especially when no ads are being shown already. Google’s quality score has been kind to me.
My top keyword (long tail be damned) accounts for 20-30% of our total volume. I have a 40% CTR and has been down to 1.2 cents a click. overall….pretty good quality I’d say. Google is paid at least 40% of the time that somebody does a search for that term - and we’re rewarded for providing them that sure money making click.
More background:
We’re usually the only “up north” ad (above search results, not in side column block of ads) and people have a hard time moving ahead of us, even though I’m only paying a couple cents a click and the average max CPC for competitors is 30-40 cents. What it takes to go “up north” in the premium position is based on a revenue. This has been confirmed through Adwords reps. I have a feeling they’re tweaking that part of the algorithm a little more than others since it’s such a huge aspect of their results page.
Recently..
We’re dropping behind AOL on this primo keyword. What’s stranger is that since we’re not the first Adwords results, nobody is going into that premium slot. So AOL’s ad is not meeting their revenue # expectation to take that position. But weirder still….no matter what I bid, I cannot move above AOL. 50 cents a click? nope, no premium position, no moving above AOL.
Why…
I have no idea. Could be that they’ve
- adjusted the revenue requirements for premium
- adjusted total quality scoring
- weighting their new partner AOL
- AOL is getting to try out the position preference functionality and is bidding to #1 no matter what (most likely?)
- my quality score is falling (true, now that we’re not premium spot anymore - one of those self-fulfilling prophecies)
- something else…
I’m not pronouncing any conspiracy theories or anything…just noting that quality scoring is still a complete mystery, and with new changes in Adwords we’re going to see a lot of behaviors we’re not familiar with.
I’ll be looking for more discussion about quality score and position preference as we see more real world examples. It just feels like a free will and pre-destination argument. In my view, you can’t really have both. …Just don’t go arguing about Google like religion now, or it’ll be “you can’t talk about religion, money, and now…Google.”
