Continued from page 1
First
broad matching ads are less relevant - which is in exact opposite direction of Google's roots. This new type of broad matching matches many remote search phrases to those paid for by advertiser. Couple near matching idea with fact that AdSense sites and pages are scanned for relevancy (which is frequently inaccurate) and a big problem starts to come about with how to provide relevant ads on syndicated results.
While many of SEO experts know how to use negative keywords, tracking, and other advanced features, smaller advertisers do not always have resources or understanding to effectively use this new, more complex medium.
Now instead of rewarding businesses for hunting out phrases that exactly match them (and thus providing higher quality search results), Google is rewarding largest companies by allowing them to be lazy. Google is shooting itself in foot by degrading relevancy for short term profits. In long run, less advertisers will eventually bring in less revenue.
Some large companies bid on generic cover all terms at prices which loose money on every transaction until competition goes under. Not only do these name brands enjoy higher click through rates (due to brand recognition), but those with stockpiles of cash can afford to burn through thousands without a blink. Many small sites can not, thus sad state of internet media is that it is now consolidating much same way as offline media is.
It gets even worse for small website now though. These same ads which they are using may now appear on pages that sometimes do not even remotely fit ads. I was looking at GMT clock time zones to ensure my clock was set at right time today (so I missed daylight saving time by a few days). The page which had different time zones listed a few US cities and a group of AdWords. Most of these AdWords were targeting Las Vegas (most likely most expensive US city). Las Vegas was not even one of cities mentioned on list. Not a relevant ad set. Bad for all parties involved.
What is result of this change to AdWords? Lower quality ads at prices which do not favor competitive market. Nick Denton predicted that expansion of these ads across web (especially coupled with decreased relevancy) that users will start to ignore them. Much same way as banners have faded, only a few years may be left before this advertising medium chips away and destroys itself.
Organic Search Results What about regular Google search results? At least they are strong, right? Sometimes they are rather weak. Some clients have had search results dominated by same sets of interlinking sites. Aiming to fight spam, Google is acknowledging this fact by incorporating a new major algorithmic change on web live.
My site went from #17 to #7 to not in top 1000 websites for "search engine marketing". While I still have customers that need work done on their sites, this sporadic re mixing is not refreshing in my mind, as well as in minds of many of my customers.
A great example of just how far off some topics are would be to follow advice of a webmaster world poster and search for tourists attractions in New York, which returns a site about Romania as first result. Jill Whalen pointed out in her High Rankings Advisor how phrase email marketing consultant is cluttered with spam. Early next year there will be another Pubconfrence sponsored by webmaster world. One of people going there was looking for a flight from london. flight to florida from london - pure spam.
I have already had concerned emails arrive from friends worried about loosing thousands of dollars a month as their top listing evaporated. All I can tell them is wait and see. Many speculate it is a commercial filter aimed to increase revenues prior to IPO. If they are already profitable why do they need to raise more money? Why are they sacrificing quality of their search results for money? Will they destroy user based permission asset they built? Can any company employ enough people to provide long term quality results?
Death Before Birth Much of what people have feared would happen to Google after it goes public has already happened. The size of their ads has increased while relevancy of free commercial listings has sharply degraded. As they are just about to go to their IPO it is clear that today Google is not as strong as it once was.
All of these problems exist, and Google has yet to go public. Shareholders are frequently short sighted. Balancing profits, public interest, and distribution of world's largest unorganized data set is not an easy task. As search market consolidates, and spammers and search engines continue cat and mouse game, it is clear that competitive open source alternative search engines such as Nutch are not desired so much as required.
While verifying no article sharing this name was in existence, I got to see an AdWords ad for exercise bikes by bigfitness.com
Aaron is a professional search engine marketing expert. He is the owner/operator of Search Marketing Info. He also publishes a free weekly newsletter called AboveTheFold. You may subscribe at http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/
