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

I bought myself an iPhone 3g for my birthday (don’t ask). I have to say, I’m not an ‘apple’ evangalist, but this is the single coolest piece of technology I’ve ever seen. I love it.

The main reason I bought it was for the web browser. It’s so far beyond anything else. Work-wise, I don’t know of another phone that allows you to login to google adwords and manage a campaign like you’re on your home computer. Then again, I’m not a gadget guy.

Anyone else using the iPhone or another phone to login to campaigns while you’re away from your desktop?

Barry Schwartz highlights a NY Times article this morning that details the story of an online entrepreneur, a gem named Mr. Savage, who built his entire business, a not so content rich nor useful Sourcetool.com, around Adwords and Adsense (problem #1), and then was devastated when slapped with the Quality Score bag o’ rocks.

The difference between this guy and everyone else? He wrote a letter to the Justice Department. As I’ve hinted and is documented everywhere, the Justice Dept. is taking this kind of thing seriously and is out there doing research.

Is Google anti-competitive?

Sure, there is no one who can compete with them.

Is it their fault?

No.

Google has a right to protect the experience of it’s users. This guy was making $100k per month by using Adwords to send traffic to a worthless arbitrage page with nothing but feeds and Adsense ads.

This is an entire business model that was solely made possible by the invention of Adsense, and he’s complaining when they decide he’s not providing enough value for his users.

Is Google perfect and holy and always right?

No, of course not. But in this case, Mr. Savage is blaming Google because he’s too lazy to go out and find other advertisers for himself. Which probably could have made him even more money had he put some work into it. Mr. Savage - you sir, are a tool.

If you’re curious as to how the new Adwords Quality Score changes will appear in your account you can see some of what I’m seeing below. It’s a slow rollout I’m told and will take several weeks. Currently only in 1 account that I can see.

Notice the difference between first page bid with OK vs Great

Check out the 1 through 10 rating:

After a brief sojourn to visit clients in the land of Cubdom I am back and will be posting more regularly.

The PPC world has had some interesting developments in the last couple weeks. Namely, the new quality score will be unfolding soon. There are several promising developments, and at the crux of it all - a per-query Quality Score.

* Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
* Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’
* ‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ in your account

So, the black box lives on, but at least we’ll get a new black box on every search. Kidding aside, I look forward to Google improving this most critical element. It actually has worked well in my opinion on the whole, but of course there is room for improvement.

Also, after experimenting with a few of the top end 3rd party campaign management platforms, I’m definitely reinforcing my belief in old school adwords editor optimization. Every one of these absurdly expensive platforms over promise and under deliver. Kind of like a politician.

Adwords editor can do anything these others can do, and it’s very inexpensive. Actually, it’s free

Google is offering a webinar to show off some of the optimization features in Adwords Editor. Even if you’re an experienced user, there’s bound to be something new you haven’t seen before. Check it out.

Phew - I was wondering when someone would create a completely automated solution to do all this work. Thank goodness I don’t have to work anymore. There’s a new solution that will do it all for me. Thanks to Webtrends for sending this gem yesterday:

The largest online advertisers are wasting billions of dollars on paid search (between US$3.2 billion and $4.5 billion annually) by not getting optimal return on their advertising investments.

Wow! That’s a lot of wasted advertising dollars! What can we possibly do to help??

WebTrends will unveil its new automated SEM optimization solution at Search Engine Strategies. The solution uses powerful self-learning technology that tests and automatically adjusts a virtually limitless number of keywords and other SEM variables, such as different ad creative, landing pages and targeting options.

Freed from the continual monitor-test-tweak cycle of bid management solutions, SEM marketers and consultants can focus on overall campaign strategy and goals, and optimizing creative execution.

Wow! That’s amazing. It will do everything for me! I can’t wait until I have this software and I won’t have to think anymore. I can just sleep all day!

Woot!

Thanks to the guys at SEMvironment for the great review of Google’s new “Insights for Search”. Sort of a Google Trends on steroids.

Speaking of steroids, my first inquiry into this wonderful tool is highly relevant to the upcoming NFL season. If you’re wondering if this data is up to date, check out the spike in Brett Favre interest of late:

Once again, Brett defeats my beloved Chicago Bears. At least he’s out of our division now.

Other developments in the world of PPC:

Google announces new content network enhancements including:

* Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.

* Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.

* Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.

* View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.

What do I see in this announcement? Well, most of these features appear to be quite useful, but “improved ads quality” is an ominous and ambiguous sounding development that I’d like to get more details on. The content network has become my tool du jour for many accounts of late. Adding a more stringent quality score factor will certainly make it more unpredictable.

We shall see.

Lastly, we can all use more more information on the Quality Score. PPC Hero has a great overview happening this week. Be sure to check it out.

My observations on this hoopla over Cuil, the most hyped search engine in history.

1. I want the name and phone number of the PR company that got them on the first page of CNN.com yesterday.

2. What is it EXACTLY, other than the thumbnails, that makes this search engine different from Google? Oh, revenue…marketshare…adwords….adsense…other than that too…what is it they’re doing here?

I’m all for competition, it makes my job easier, but please, unless you REALLY have something to offer, don’t blow your horn until you’re ready for prime time.

David Szetela from ClixMarketing and Search Engine Watch interviewed me recently for an episode of PPC Rockstars.

The topic of the day was ‘The Virtues of Starting Small’ and we also covered some useful tools that we use to manage accounts. I had a blast on the call and enjoyed the opportunity to talk shop with one of the great innovators in our industry.

Don’t forget to tune in at 4pm Eastern!

While on the phone with my top notch Google rep I was reviewing a particular account where a company name was a keyword (in an adgroup of maybe 4-5 variations of the company name). 3-4 of the keywords had a quality score of ‘poor’. This is one of those quality score quirks that drives people up a wall.

My rep’s response - paraphrased - If organic serps pull an inordinate percentage of clicks and the sponsored listing is getting a low ctr, it’s perceived to have low quality and can acquire a poor QS over time. Not because it’s an irrelevant keyword, but rather because it’s performing poorly. In this case, this company name has no other bidders, so the organic listing is a universal one with the map, etc., so it makes perfect sense no one is clicking on the ad. Not much we can do in this case.

This is an interesting situation and the explanation raised a lot of questions for me…

This post is so good I almost didn’t want to link to it…it’s well worth your time. You may want to tattoo this tutorial on your arm, kind of like PrisonBreak

http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/how-to-use-the-google-content-network-to-invest-in-domains/

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with another PPC guru last week. I asked why he didn’t author a blog and his general feeling is that he doesn’t want to create more competition for himself by giving away secrets.

I tend to agree, but then again, I have learned quite a bit from others online so it’s only right to keep it going both ways, right?