the PPC Book|Pay Per Click Blog | Long Tail Thoughts in a Short Tail World

‘Imagine there’s no Adwords, it’s easy if you try’ - John Lennon

The macroeconomic slump has finally broken through and touched the impenetrable wall of The Google. While I’m not a financial analyst, I know that share price often has little to do with anything other than the psychology of outsiders. Nor am I worried that the world of search marketing is just around the corner from impending doom.

HOWEVER - there are a few tidbits that give me pause. If only because of the wee little fact that almost every single dollar in my bank account is generated from the existence of, and my salable skills using, Adwords and other search marketing vehicles.

Here are those tidbits:

the number of clicks on ads next to Google’s search results fell by 7% between December and January. Google’s ad click performance was also down 0.3% on January last year, according to comScore.

Does this represent a slowdown? Or are we just seeing a reflection of ’shopping’ in general. Who buys anything in January?

So much for that thought…

Google had seen the same 7% decline between November and December. ComScore’s data also showed that Yahoo saw a 1% month-on-month fall in paid search ad clicks in January, but Microsoft saw a 4% rise.

OK, this is worrisome, 7% drop 2 months in a row? During the holiday season? What’s going on? Did the clickable area decision come back to bite them?

The speculation will continue, and smarter folks than I will debate the topic.

Let’s not get crazy though. Some facts to calm us all down:

$16.6bn revenues from search advertising

$8bn in cash and the liquidity of its shares

Analysts at Citigroup also said that Google’s efforts to improve the quality of leads for its advertisers, by trying to reduce accidental clicks, may have impacted the volume of search clicks as well as the wider macro-economic climate.

Moving towards quality is always a good thing. Google is fine, thank goodness, but as we’re seeing, nothing is immune to a really bad economic slowdown.

Darn.

So my original question - what would you do if this niche went away? Personally, being in this business since the mid 90’s, I’ve moved from web development, to email/permission marketing, to coreg, to search. I suppose I would just adjust and move to another area of online. Mobile marketing maybe? Or maybe I’d sell trailers. Something different.

What about you?

Yahoo announced Friday that they upped the limit from 50 to 250 for excluded, aka, negative keywords:

Excluded keyword limits have increased from 50 to 250 to help relevance

• Go to your Ad Group Settings page.
• Click on “Tactic Settings.”
• On the “Tactic Settings” page the “Excluded Words” feature is displayed.
• Click on “Excluded Words” to open the entry field.
• Add your excluded words but do not to use any commas or semicolons after each word.
• Click “Save Changes,” to process the Excluded Words list.

By all means, take advantage!

One of the things that makes Chicago unique is the importance of corruption influence. Chicago is the city of clout (defined by the icon Mike Royko).

Anyway, I don’t really have any clout because I’m not in realestate or city sanitation, and I don’t even live in Chicago anymore. BUT, I do know some people who are hiring. So I’m playing Chicago Alderman today. I know a guy who knows a guy.

If you live in Chicago or the surrounding burbs and you are an experienced PPC analyst, I know of a couple attractive opportunities. If you are interested send me a note and contact info through my contact page, or send your resume to jeff at theppcbook dot com.

No post from me today - but 2 others I can point you to:

LocalMN - Net Neutrality - Will it Influence Your Vote?

Most of you are probably aware of net neutrality. If not, it’s critical to all of us, so do some research.

Obama: In favor of net neutrality and promises to make it a priority in his first year of office to reinstate net neutrality

McCain: Sen. McCain says we should let the market and technology solve the Net-neutrality issue: “When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.”

TopRank: The Fallacy of SEO Celebrity

Good post by Lee about the odd phenomenon of seo celebrity.

If you’ve been hesitating on experimenting with the Adwords Conversion Optimizer now may be the time to try it. The Adwords blog team is pushing their case and educating everyone on the process and setting expectations. 2 key points I’d like to point out from their post:

# Keep in mind that if you choose a CPA lower than the recommended maximum CPA bid, you are likely to get less traffic than you did with your old CPC bids. It’s a good idea to start with this recommendation and adjust based on the results you observe.

As we all should know what our acceptable CPA range is, you will get a good idea right off the bat if this will work for your campaign or not. If your recommended max CPA bid is out of line with your metrics, you risk losing traffic if your actual max CPA bid is too low.

However, if those 2 are fairly close and you decide to give it a shot, you do have something to fall back on:

If you choose to opt out of the Conversion Optimizer, your campaign will revert to the previous CPC bids you were using. (So, there’s nothing to stop you from giving it a try!)

Even if it didn’t reset itself to your previous bids, you should be backing up your campaigns via Adwords Editor before any major changes, so you could simply override the campaign changes.

So, there’s the case for giving it a shot, as well as 1 item to look for when you’re going through the setup process.

I just quickly want to echo Larry Becker’s thoughts on the designer conundrum. Larry says we should all stop ‘wrestling elephants’ and start focusing on small, nimble web design changes. Constancy, not big overhauls, are the rule of thumb.

I have yet, in the entire time I’ve been working with large ecommerce clients, seen any of them undertake a 6 month + redesign project and actually come out of it with improved ROI, conversions, or sales. Sad but true. Not only are you tying yourself down to 1 idea for the entire time, think of the change that happens in our online environment in 6 months. It’s an eternity. Many large design projects can creep over the 12 month mark. You may start scoping a project now, and actually not finish the design until sometime in 2009. Imagine what will be different then. What will Google be emphasizing in their search algo in 2009? What quality score factors will be in play? Will there even be a quality score? Will there be Google, Yahoo, and MSN? Or will it be Google and Fox?

The single best change I’ve ever had an ecommerce client make was a database/hosting change. It was a big deal to them, but relatively inexpensive (just a hosting adjustment), and had the greatest impact in terms of metrics. They focused on what was ‘under the hood’, not the paint job.

If there’s any advice I can impart to advertisers it would be this:

Remember that a design is just a skin, and skins are cheap and easy to produce. In 1 year, you could test 12 different skins for a relatively small investment.

Think small, it’s the subtle changes that will make the biggest impact. For example, work on your landing page copy relevance. When you’re done with that, work on your pricing, your call to action, your product placement, or improve your product pictures. There’s a million small adjustments you can make before you get into a complete design overhaul.

Most of these changes can be tackled in under a week.

My rule of thumb: If it will take more than a month I don’t want to hear about it.

Perfect example of the void that still exists when shopping locally online.

Sunday 1pm:

Temperature: -9
Windchill: -35

Returning from a quick overnight vacation we’re on highway 94 traveling about 70mph when my right front tire decides to implode. You couldn’t have picked a colder, less opportune time for this to happen.

Long story short, I drive farther than I should into a gas station right off the highway. A really cool guy helps me get the spare on, a 15 mn job with him, 30 minutes by myself.

Anyhow, I make it home and hop online to look up tire prices to see where I find a good deal. After some examination, I determine the tire that imploded was formerly a ‘Lemans Champion 205 55 R16′.

A quick search brings up no relevant paid search listings

Some shoplocal spam

That leads me to the shoplocal spam for a tireshop in Alabama. Hmmm…

Only when I search the most generic terms possible do I find any results:

tires minneapolis

Moral of the story:

If you sell tires regionally, you maybe, just maybe, want to have campaigns with tire makes and models.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman wrote a detailed analysis yesterday of the their current paid search share among the big three, and it’s implications in light of the potential Microsoft Yahoo deal. This article is well worth a read. I wholeheartedly agree with:

I really wish Microsoft and Yahoo all the best. Together or apart, I’m rooting for them to succeed.

Our industry would be strengthened if Google has stronger competition, and it would be great if the merger yielded increased transparency.

OK, I’m going to give this thing a chance. If for nothing else, we need it.

If this whole MSN Yahoo acquisition were a car race, here’s how I see it:

Adwords: The BMW.

It’s simple and elegant, but powerful underneath the hood. It’s got the latest technology that no one else has. It’s also got great distribution. It’s a world beater. No one can touch it.

Yahoo Search: The ‘67 Camaro.

It’s a classic American muscle car. At it’s peak it was sexy, innovative, powerful, and universally loved. However, in the last few years it has failed to keep up with technology changes. Hasn’t innovated, has fallen in with the wrong crowd, and has been neglected. It’s rusty, balding, and it’s past it’s prime. It’s sitting in the front yard on blocks.

MSN Adcenter: The Ford Focus Sync.

An underappreciated competitor. Great value, cutting edge sync technology, and about as much reach as a 5th grader in the NBA. It may actually be very cool, but the fact it’s made by Ford is simply too much to overcome.

If you were MicroHoo (microsoft/yahoo), what would you do?

I’ll tell you what you do. Think of it this way -

Can a Ford Focus ever beat a BMW in a road race?

Good lord no.

If you took the guts of a Camaro and put it in the Focus would it have a chance?

Probably not, it’s a Focus for christ sake.

Now. Let me ask you this:

Could a ‘67 Camaro with some modern technology upgrades beat a BMW?

Maybe.

At least you would stand a fighting chance.

OK. Now we’re talking. Let’s take it one step further.

Could you beat a BMW with a lovingly restored ‘67 Camaro, jet black, with high performance wheels, an upgraded engine with the latest sport fuel injection, a racing suspension, and all the latest racing technology?

I think you might kick a BMW right off the track with that package. Either way, you would create believers. You would sell tickets to the race. You would get yourself back in the game.

Take a little strategy from the politicians. Play the CHANGE card. The underdog. The outsider. Point out Google’s weaknesses. Make them look like the bully they are.

What I’m saying is, take the microsoft engineers who know how to execute and manage a project. Look how far they’ve come in no time at all with Adcenter. Then give them Yahoo’s market share and content abilities. Combine those together, and you’re almost in the game.

Then get in there with your souped up Camaro and kick their ass.

C'mon guys. We want to see a race.

I’ve always been a big proponent of more competition for Google, primarily from Yahoo and MSN, but this just isn’t going to work. Both platforms are problematic, their inventory is totally disparate. Synthesizing the two networks would be a total nightmare, probably impossible.

Even though it won’t work, it’s their only option. What other choice do they have?

I’ll get more into this later, but the ONLY way they can make this thing a success is to move beyond paid search. They have to transcend paid search and offer an alternative that has a fighting chance against google. Yahoo and MSN will NEVER EVER beat Google at their core competency. Yahoo has a different core competency, it’s called content. Why not focus on creating and controlling as much of the content landscape as possible? Dominate the content and then control the ad serving throughout that network.

I mean, think about TV. Who controls TV? The guys who make the content, the studios. It’s not run by the guys who publish the TV Guides (google). The search engine industry is kind of upside down, no?

Wouldn’t it have be interesting to combine Doubleclick with the new YahooMSN?

hmmm…