Paying Google Prices for Yahoo Quality

ClickEquations Blog

A Serious Look at Paid Search Marketing Strategies, Tactics & Tools

By ClickEquations | June 20, 2008

After first passively and then actively squandering a business and technical lead, running Yahoo into the ground over the past few years, destroying and rebuking billions in shareholder value, and sending his entire executive team heading for the exits, it is worth a moment to consider what Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has done to you, the paid search advertiser. And what you should do in return.

George Michie covers this topic over at SearchEngineLand today, and discusses the fact that with Google campaigns running on the Yahoo properties, there is a clear economic problem – your bids were set based on the value of Google search and search network traffic. And for the vast majority of companies that value is not equivalent to the value of Yahoo search and search network traffic.

In other words, you’re now paying for steak but getting served hamburger.

Your two choices, as George points out, are to accept this fact or cut bids which drives down your Google results. Nice choices, huh?

I’d like to suggest a third option. Google needs to de-couple the Search Network from the Google Search bidding, like they did a few years ago with the Content Network. In other words, we should be allowed to separate campaigns/ad-groups and bid to the value of the network and not be forced to buy it bundled with Google search.

Making this change puts advertisers in line with Google on this and any major network ad-distribution agreements. Ultimately, allowing us to opt in and out of individual distribution channels, and get click-level reports on performance is also necessary.

It took them a while but Google did the right thing on the Content Network, and has made incremental improvements in these areas since the first step. All these moves were driven by advertiser feedback and demands. Time to start speaking up on this one.

Jerry has cost enough people money and heart-ache. It shouldn’t have to cost all of us.

http://www.acteva.com SF Greg

We see all search queries for our AdWords account. Last week I saw a click on an ad from a query that I don’t think should have been a match for anything we bid on. Since I can see the referrer string, I clicked and saw the exact search results page the user saw. There was our ad appearing in the top position on a search engine I’d never heard of – obviously the search engine was one of Google’s partners. Out of curiosity I typed the same search into Google and found our ad did not appear. Actually, there were no ads on that Google search results page. People like to check if their ads are appearing on Google and in which position. But where else are my ads running? It’s admirable that Google is concerned with search quality and Quality Score, but then they pass my account to other search engines that are less discriminating and are willing to do anything for a click. On this other engine, the entire visible screen was ads, with organic results all below the fold. It’s ridiculous. Not only should Google decouple search partners, they should have line item reporting so I can see how I’m doing on each source. And while they are at it, they should expose all search queries that lead to matches. All this is in their best interests, because we will then fine tune our accounts to provide better quality results.
http://www.acteva.com SF Greg

We see all search queries for our AdWords account. Last week I saw a click on an ad from a query that I don’t think should have been a match for anything we bid on. Since I can see the referrer string, I clicked and saw the exact search results page the user saw. There was our ad appearing in the top position on a search engine I’d never heard of – obviously the search engine was one of Google’s partners. Out of curiosity I typed the same search into Google and found our ad did not appear. Actually, there were no ads on that Google search results page. People like to check if their ads are appearing on Google and in which position. But where else are my ads running? It’s admirable that Google is concerned with search quality and Quality Score, but then they pass my account to other search engines that are less discriminating and are willing to do anything for a click. On this other engine, the entire visible screen was ads, with organic results all below the fold. It’s ridiculous. Not only should Google decouple search partners, they should have line item reporting so I can see how I’m doing on each source. And while they are at it, they should expose all search queries that lead to matches. All this is in their best interests, because we will then fine tune our accounts to provide better quality results.
http://www.acteva.com SF Greg

We see all search queries for our AdWords account. Last week I saw a click on an ad from a query that I don’t think should have been a match for anything we bid on. Since I can see the referrer string, I clicked and saw the exact search results page the user saw. There was our ad appearing in the top position on a search engine I’d never heard of – obviously the search engine was one of Google’s partners. Out of curiosity I typed the same search into Google and found our ad did not appear. Actually, there were no ads on that Google search results page. People like to check if their ads are appearing on Google and in which position. But where else are my ads running? It’s admirable that Google is concerned with search quality and Quality Score, but then they pass my account to other search engines that are less discriminating and are willing to do anything for a click. On this other engine, the entire visible screen was ads, with organic results all below the fold. It’s ridiculous. Not only should Google decouple search partners, they should have line item reporting so I can see how I’m doing on each source. And while they are at it, they should expose all search queries that lead to matches. All this is in their best interests, because we will then fine tune our accounts to provide better quality results.
http://www.acteva.com SF Greg

We see all search queries for our AdWords account. Last week I saw a click on an ad from a query that I don’t think should have been a match for anything we bid on. Since I can see the referrer string, I clicked and saw the exact search results page the user saw. There was our ad appearing in the top position on a search engine I’d never heard of – obviously the search engine was one of Google’s partners. Out of curiosity I typed the same search into Google and found our ad did not appear. Actually, there were no ads on that Google search results page. People like to check if their ads are appearing on Google and in which position. But where else are my ads running? It’s admirable that Google is concerned with search quality and Quality Score, but then they pass my account to other search engines that are less discriminating and are willing to do anything for a click. On this other engine, the entire visible screen was ads, with organic results all below the fold. It’s ridiculous. Not only should Google decouple search partners, they should have line item reporting so I can see how I’m doing on each source. And while they are at it, they should expose all search queries that lead to matches. All this is in their best interests, because we will then fine tune our accounts to provide better quality results.
http://clickequations.com/blog/ Craig Danuloff

Thanks Greg. Makes me wonder if there is a list, compiled by Google or 3rd party, of all the engines in the ‘Search Network’? Would be very handy and help to drive pressure to let us opt in/out of them individually and/or via some group system.
http://clickequations.com/blog/ Craig Danuloff

Thanks Greg. Makes me wonder if there is a list, compiled by Google or 3rd party, of all the engines in the ‘Search Network’? Would be very handy and help to drive pressure to let us opt in/out of them individually and/or via some group system.
http://clickequations.com/blog/ Craig Danuloff

Thanks Greg. Makes me wonder if there is a list, compiled by Google or 3rd party, of all the engines in the ‘Search Network’? Would be very handy and help to drive pressure to let us opt in/out of them individually and/or via some group system.
http://clickequations.com/blog/ Craig Danuloff

Thanks Greg. Makes me wonder if there is a list, compiled by Google or 3rd party, of all the engines in the ‘Search Network’? Would be very handy and help to drive pressure to let us opt in/out of them individually and/or via some group system.
http://clickequations.com/blog/ Craig Danuloff

Thanks Greg. Makes me wonder if there is a list, compiled by Google or 3rd party, of all the engines in the 'Search Network'? Would be very handy and help to drive pressure to let us opt in/out of them individually and/or via some group system.
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