Keltex Blog

Google Instant Steals 25% of Your Organic Search Results

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:09:00 -0700

Google has been touting their new Instant search as giving users “better search results, faster”. But it seems that organic search results have suffered.

Here’s a search test I did using the phrase Insurance Quotes. This is a pretty highly advertised for search term. Here’s “Google Normal”

Notice that you get 4 organic results above the fold. And 8 paid results. Here’s the same search using Google Instant:

Now there’s barely 3 organic search results, 25% less than without google instant. So who suffers here? Probably Geico for one. They were the #4 search result, but now they aren’t even visible above the fold. So what does this do? Probably encourages Geico keeps their paid advertising high so that they are visible in the paid results.

And those paid results haven’t suffered at all. Still 3 paid results below the search bar and 5 paid search results on the right side. So you’ve gone from 4 out of 12 search results being organic (33%) to 3 out of 11 searches being organic (27%).

So instead of giving you “better search results”, you’re getting less search results. So this seems to add more fuel to the fire that Google’s Instant is more about enhancing ad revenue than improving users’ search experience.

In my opinion, if Google was trying to improve user search results with Google Instant, instead of stealing screen real estate from the organic results they would steal it from the paid results. Why not show 2 paid results below the search box when google instant is active and 3 results when it’s not? Wouldn’t that be more fair?

Note: I did this test at 1024x768 resolution… a relatively common notebook resolution. Your results may vary. Some people have higher resolution screens. Others don’t use their browser maximized or have additional toolbars so they have less effective resolution.

Stuck with .net

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 06:55:00 -0700

Leaving .net by Dave Newman struck a cord with me. I’ve been using Microsoft technologies professionally since 1994. One of my client’s platform (still have him to this day) evolved over time from Excel to Access to SQL Server with an ASP.NET front end. Most of my income is from these long term clients whose businesses run on the .net platform.

.Net Used to be Fun

Getting started with .net for me was a lot of fun. That’s because it’s how I learned web technologies and evolved away from the desktop. My gut said that the web was going to be far more important than the desktop and fortunately I was right.

But years later working on stable platforms, my work is mostly just maintenance. Adding a new report here. Adding new business logic there. Sometimes I get to add a new feature or two (“can we run those refunds directly through authorize.net?”).

It’s nothing exciting of course. But it pays the bills. And I’ve done this so long now that I can get what I need done efficiently and quickly.

But it’s nothing exciting. Even with ASP.NET MVC which is sort of a breath of fresh air, there’s no way for me to go back and rewrite my clients’ applications in this framework. Maybe I’ll use it for new projects, but even though it’s “better” than ASP.NET forms it still feels a few years behind some of the more cutting edge platforms.

I crave the excitement that I see in the Ruby on Rails and Python communities. I dabbled a bit in RoR a couple of years ago. The project didn’t go very far but I really liked the Ruby community who responded quickly to my questions.

.Net’s Lack of Community

The thin .net community is definitely a problem for me. For example I asked a question on StackOverflow regarding iCal a few days ago. I think SO is currently the most active community for .Netters. No response. Not a one. Googled for hours and can’t find any sort of answer.

If I was working in Ruby, there’s a whole library for dealing with iCal with what looks like excellent documentation. That looks a lot more appealing to me than the cone of silence I received in .net

But I can’t just jump ship from my current work. It pays the bills. My clients like me and depend on me.

So What Do I Do Tomorrow?

Now here’s my dilemma. I have a new project idea that I would like to move forward with. Do I write it in ASP.NET MVC which I know pretty well? Or do I take the leap and learn/write the new thing in RoR or Python? I know that if I pick one of these newer platforms it will take me a lot longer to get up and running because of the learning curve. I’m tempted (once again) just to dive in with .net because that’s what I understand. But I’ll still be suck with .net.

"Luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you..."

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:10:38 -0700

“Luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose, the reason why luxury cruises and the great hotels are full of fatheads who, when they express an opinion, seems as though they are from another planet.”

- Paul Theroux in Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

You Should Block Your Competitors from Seeing Your Adwords Ads

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:02:00 -0800

There are two things that your online competitors are probably doing right now:

You competitors are clicking on your AdWords ads.
Your competitors are looking at your AdWords ads to figure out how to improve their online campaigns (and trying to take market share away from you).

If you don’t believe it’s likely, then don’t read any further. But if you think either is possible, then read on.

Somebody is Clicking on my Ads

It’s a niggling feeling. You have no definitive proof. But you know in your heart that every day your competitors are clicking on your ads.

One of the biggest frustrations with Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is click fraud. Click fraud is when either a human or automated script generates a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link.

Google claims that they have many automated click-fraud detection systems in place. So the actual amount of invalid clicks that get through are quite low. And we can trust their automated systems.

Do you Trust Google’s Click Fraud Detection?

Matt Cutts of Google (the guy in charge of their web spam team) had an interesting post the other day. Google uses automated tools to detect web spam in the same way they use automated tools to detect invalid clicks. His post was titled Calling for Link Spam Reports. And what he’s asking for is for us (webmasters) to report what we think is link spam, links that are meant to game Google’s organic search.

Question #1: Why would Google want us to manually report report link spam?

Answer: Google recognizes that their automated systems are imperfect.

Question #2: If Google’s automated systems for detecting nefarious activity are imperfect, does that mean that their click fraud detection system might also be imperfect?

Answer: It’s a strong possibility.

Personally I prefer to do what I can from my side to minimize the clicks coming from my competitors.

Your Ads are Free Competitive Information

Let’s say you come up with a brilliant new PPC marketing plan. Maybe it’s new ad copy, keywords, promotion or a landing page. The moment you go live with your new plan on Google Adwords, your competitor is going to see it.

I’ve seen this happen many times. We come up with some new ad copy tweak and 24 hours after we go live to test it our competitors are using the very similar ad copy. Wow that was a waste.

I’ve also seen a change happen on the website which is then reflected on the ads. Perhaps a new promotion or new landing page. Why give your competitors a free heads up on your current marketing and sales plans? Make them do a little of their own work!

How to Block

OK, I’ve convinced you. You’re going to block them. But how do you go about doing this? There are two things that I do to block them:

Block their IP address(s)
Block them by location

Neither are totally foolproof, but both can go a long way towards reducing your competitor’s clicks.

Blocking Competitor IP Addresses

Blocking a competitor’s IP address means going into Google AdWords and excluding their IP address or IP address range. AdWords lets you pick up to 20 IP addresses or address ranges and blocks all your AdWords ads appearing to those IP addresses. Google says this feature is primarily meant to block ads that are visible to you. For example, so that your employees don’t accidentally click on your ads. (Why their automated invalid click detection can’t detect these clicks is beyond me). But blocking clicks from competitors seems far more useful to me.

AdWords buries this capability. In fact there’s no menu choice to get there. You have to search for instructors on this help page:

Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
Click this link to visit the IP Address Exclusion Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/IpNegativesStartWizard)
Select a campaign, and click Go.
Enter the list of IP addresses to be excluded.
Click Exclude IP Addresses.

Actually figuring out your competitor’s IP address is another matter. I’ve got some ideas for you that I’ll post in an upcoming blog.

Blocking Competitor Locations

Another way to block competitors is through blocking their location. Let’s say that you know your biggest competitor is in San Antonio, TX. Why not just block San Antonio? You can do this by explicitly blocking the location on a per AdWords campaign basis (instructions may be found here):

Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
On the “All Online Campaigns” page, click the name of the campaign you wish to edit.
Click the “Settings” tab.
Click Edit next to “Locations.”
Click “Exclude areas within selected locations.”
Browse the list of available areas and select those you’d like to exclude.
Click Done excluding.
Click Save.

There’s a surprising amount of granularity you can apply when excluding a location. So you don’t have to exclude all of Los Angeles, CA. You can just exclude Agura Hills.

The Location Disinformation Trick

One trick you can perform with location blocking is to create an additional campaign made just for them. This campaign is targeted at the very locations your real campaign blocks. Maybe you pay less for those ads, or you’re missing some keywords or maybe the copy isn’t quite your A game. But this way you have some control over the flow of information that your competitor receives.

The advantage of this trick is that it makes your competitor a lot less suspicious of your actions than having all your ads suddenly disappear from his browser. Also if you still have some potential customers nearby your competitor, you haven’t completely eliminated ads showing for them.

Some Cautions

Both blocking techniques have some drawbacks. Namely blocking ads from appearing for potential customers.

I don’t worry about this two much for IP address blocking. So, you accidentally block your ads for a single individual or company will probably not kill your business. But you should be cautious of IP addresses that are proxies for larger groups of people. For example, you wouldn’t want to block the IP addresses for AT & T’s wireless services and not show your ads to iPhone users (if this is a target market). It’s always best to do a reverse DNS lookup to find out who’s at the other end of the IP address and decide based on the results.

For location blocking, a lot depends on where your competitor is located. For example if they are coming from a relatively small area such as Durham, NC, maybe it’s not a big deal. But if they are in a large metropolitan area such as New York or San Jose, then there is a large potential loss of customers.

Also location based ad serving is not as exact science as it sounds. For example, the city where it reports my IP address to be is 15 miles away from the city where I live.

Blocking Ain’t Foolproof

While in theory it’s easy to block your competitors, the reality is that it’s not foolproof. People often use internet access from multiple locations… their work, their home, via their wireless provider, or at a WiFi enabled location like a coffee shop. So with any blocking that you do, there’s a way to get around it. Somebody really sophisticated could use a proxy service and get around it completely.

But if you competitor has to work a little harder to figure out what you’re doing or to click on you, maybe it’s worth it anyway.

Firefox 3.x, Safari, and Chrome Not Supported on Microsoft adCenter

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:46:00 -0800

I tried to login to Microsoft adCenter today using Google Chrome (my current browser of choice). Then I got this Non-Compatible Browser message:

So Chrome is not supported. Ok, fine. It’s a pretty new browser. So what exactly IS supported then. I click on the link:

Wait. Am I reading this right? The only supported browsers are:

Internet Explorer (IE 6, IE 7, and IE 8)
Firefox (1.5 and 2.0)

No Firefox 3.x (released 20 months ago… June 2008), No Safari. No Chrome.

But read a little closer. The only operating systems supported are Windows 98, 2000, XP Vista. That means No to Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux. No to Virtual PC either… whatever that is.

No Macs? Another memo to Microsoft adCenter team: In 2010 lot of creative agencies are mac based and use modern browsers. If you want people to use your advertising platform, make sure you support them.

Want to see last quarter's ad spend in Microsoft adCenter? Good Luck.

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 08:55:00 -0800

I run a few different PPC campaigns for an online business. Google adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, and Microsft adCenter.

Trying to be a good businessman, I like to track my advertising and other expenses on a quarterly basis. So I go into adCenter and see that I can select various date ranges: Last 3 months, last 6 months, etc:

But I need last quarter which is from 10/1/09 through 12/31/09. No problem, I select Custom Date Range and then enter in these dates. Then I get this:

Er, what? You can’t entered a custom date range longer than 31 days? What the hell? How do I get this data. After fiddling around, here’s the “solution”:

Go to the Report Center
Create a Campaign Performance Report
Set the Unit of Time to be Month
Set the date range to be Custom.
Enter Oct 2009 through Dec 2009

And presto here’s the report.

Oh and you have to add up the monthly Spend yourself.

Memo to Microsoft… if you’re competing in the online advertising space, maybe you ought to make it easy for customers to pull out the simple data they need to run their business. I mean you’re hardly worth it as is, compared to adwords, so stop trying to make customers jump through hoops.

Maybe next post I’ll tell you about adCenter’s odd date selection methodology.