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

I’m watching with some bemusement this morning at all the financial news surrounding Google’s ‘deceleration’. This absolutely kills me. Here are some snippets:

Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley: Meeker writes that she still thinks Google’s fundamental business trends are intact. But she also calculates that if ComScore’s data are accurate, and assuming international paid clicks are growing at a 35% rate, the company would have a blended click rate growth of 19%, or 4% sequentially. That, she says, would imply net revenue of $3.52 billion for Q1, or about $120 million short of the $3.64 billion consensus. Meeker, though, is sticking with her above-consensus estimate of $3.72 billion.

Youssef Squali, Jefferies: “While Google’s actual numbers are likely to be materially better than what’s being reported, ComScore’s less than flattering growth trajectory for GOOG does point to continued decelerating growth, and is likely to keep the stock under pressure short term.”

God forbid - DECELERATING GROWTH - AGHAST…

Did anyone catch the revenue number?

$3.52 billion for Q1

I wish I could decelerate like that.

These analysts treat Google like a manufacturing or retail company. They don’t understand online advertising in the slightest. Apparently everyone is up in arms over the fact that -

“The click-through rate grew 3 percent in February compared with a year earlier, and January saw no increase compared with January 2007. Several months earlier, the rate was growing 25 percent to 40 percent compared with a year earlier. The new data is in line with click-through declines Google reported last quarter.”

This is a situation where Google is not listening to the street at all when making decisions about how they tweak their platform, and it will benefit them in the long run.

I have to say, Adcenter is impressing the hell out of me lately with their support. I’ve had 2 issues recently which were both resolved with 1 day, by actual humans who called me. 2 important points:

They spoke clear english (with a little canadian, ya)

They understood their product quite well

Can’t ask for anything else.

This is an update from March 6th, but an important one, so I’ll link to the post from Adwords.

In the next couple weeks Google will start to measure your landing page load time. I’m actually surprised this wasn’t being done already, so no complaints here.

2 things to keep in mind:

1. Load time ’scores’ will be displayed on your keyword analysis page
2. After the load time scores are displayed, there will be a 1 month review period for you to make adjustments

Yes, it’s another thing to keep an eye on, and Google just keeps raising the bar. For those managing client campaigns this will be a bit more of an issue, as addressing client hosting is a messy proposition. A smart strategy in that case would be to bring it up when you’re in the setup stage of a campaign. Load time is generally ‘visible’. You shouldn’t have to wait for Google to tell you that your page loads slowly.

More information here.

Okay, this is one of those 3-4 day runs where I’m seeing wild conversion rate swings in multiple campaigns. These are campaigns that I know better than my own family.

Mr. Adwords behind the curtain, I know you’re doing something over there with your hog wild broad matching.

Cut it out…

***Update - It appears the Adwords dropped the ball a little bit yesterday, which partially explains what we were all seeing.

Please note that conversion tracking data collected during this brief period may under-report the number of actual conversions achieved.

However, this has been going on longer than 1 day, so I still think there’s something else going on.

Are we all being unwittingly opted into the not-so secret borderline fraudulent unsold inventory firesale Automatic Matching beta?