Archive for May, 2006
I got an interesting email this weekend with “Clicksettlement” in the From field. The subject line was:
Subj: Important Legal Notice Regarding Your Google AdWords Account
The body of the email reads as follows:
This court-ordered notice may affect your legal rights. Please read it carefully. If you purchased online advertising from Google between January 1, 2002 and the present, you are a class member in a class-action lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Miller County, Arkansas. This notice is to inform you of the Court’s certification of a class; the nature of the claims alleged; your right to participate in, or exclude yourself from, the class; a proposed settlement; and how you can claim an award of advertising credits under the settlement. Please read the attached notice.Â
You can get more information at: www.clicksettlement.com.
The above text also appeared in multiple languages. After much investigating over the weekend, I was convinced this was spam because:
- The above URL was redirected to this page: http://pull.xmr3.com/p/444393A4/70127684/http-www.clicksettlement.com.html
- The domain - clicksettlement.com was not resolving to an actual website (which could mean it’s getting hit with a lot of traffic.
- The email came with an attached PDF file (which I opened). Even though the file contained more info on the settlement - I kicked myself for opening it and ran virus scans all weekend.
- There was absolutely nothing showing up on Google or Yahoo for the term “clicksettlement.com” on Saturday. By Sunday, there were a few pages listed in Google for this term and I found a thread on Digital Point’s forum about the email which dismissed it universally as spam.
However, it’s not spam!
How do I know this? I spoke with my Google rep this morning and she assured me that the email was legitimate, and that Google was aware it was going out this weekend. No one at Google apparently reviewed the email though, so she was pretty surprised when I told her that most people in the search community were dismissing the message as spam.
She then followed up with an email stating the following:
This is a legitimate email regarding an invalid click class-action lawsuit that Google has recently settled. A lawsuit was filed in the United States against Google and Yahoo alleging that these companies were overcharging for ads. While Google has not agreed with what the plaintiffs have said in the lawsuit, Google decided to reach a compromise on this issue. Part of the compromise is to offer credits to our advertisers if they believe they have been overcharged for clicks on their ads that were not valid. Because our advertisers are around the world, we decided to send a notice to all of our advertisers, even if they are not in the United States, so that they are aware of this.Â
This email and the attached PDF provide details and explain how you can participate in the settlement. Please note that under the settlement, you will be able to claim advertising credits that can be applied toward future advertising with Google.Â
If you fit within the definition of the class that the Court has certified and you believe you have been affected by invalid clicks, you are eligible to make a claim. To do so, you must submit a claim form online at http://www.clicksettlement.com. Claim forms must be submitted between June 19, 2006 and August 4, 2006. Note that claims made after August 4, 2006 will not be considered. The class the Court has certified is defined as: All persons or entities, together with any officer, employee or agent of the same, that purchased advertising on the Internet from Google on or after January 1, 2002, regardless of where the ad was displayed.
And from the horse’s mouth:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/05/lanes-gifts-v-google-settlement.html
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May 22nd, 2006
This is somewhat old news to veteran podcast-listeners, but I have just learned about The Daily Searchcast, a podcast published by Search Engine Watch and hosted by Search Engine Watch editors Danny Sullivan and Gary Price. The Daily Searchcast is self-described as, “a 10 to 15 minute overview of the prior day’s search news.” I listened in for the first time today (to May 17th’s podcast) and learned oh so much. Here are a few topics they covered…
And these are just a few of the topics covered from the May 17, 2006 podcast. The Daily Searchcast should be required listening if you are a search marketer - at least a few times a week.
May 19th, 2006
The key to having a successfull website comes down to identifying your niche. Every website out there has a niche target, even Amazon bootstrapped themselves with the book niche.
The goal is to identify your niche and become the epicenter for all things around that category. It’s not easy, believe me - even with a blog where I post 1-2 articles per day around my niche (hot sauce) it has taken just over a year to really gain decent rankings in the engines. By decent I mean #3 in Google for a 30,000,000 plus competitive keyword term. And mind you, thats without any external link building - I’ve relied solely on the content of the site to bring in the links.
Content is a hard concept for many online retailers to understand, after all a product page is content to a search engine spider, right? Of course it is, but that one product page is not going to keep the users coming back to your site. And it’s not going to draw in the links. Retailers need to give people a reason to come back and a reason to interact with your site. Here’s a hint: Let your customers write product reviews. Good or bad, they provide perspective on the item which may lead to more sales (customer confidence) and it also provides the search engine spiders with “spider food” (and no work on your part).
But to really own your niche online, it takes a lot more work. I didn’t become the guru of hot sauce overnight, I took a risk by putting myself and my business out into the ‘public’ eye - but it’s paid off. Everyday I get to interact with my target market and they tune into the site on a daily basis. Yes, my competitors are also tuning in and watching my every move but thats the price you have to pay. And it’s definately a small price when you own your niche.
May 11th, 2006
Google announced the release of Google Trends today, prompting a fellow search geek to advise me to “blog the news” as quickly as I can. So here it is folks! Google Trends has been launched. WOO HOO!
Okay, so what is it and how does it benefit my clients?
Google Trends, as defined by Google, enables you to “compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics.” The tool also, “displays how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often. “
Sounds pretty cool - so I gave it a try. Many of the campaigns I work on are health-related, so I typed in “pelvic pain” and “endometriosis” as my first simultaneous search. The graph I got showed me that a lot more people search on the former term and that the highest search volume comes from two locations in India. The third highest volume comes from Chicago in the U.S. (where my client is located).
Can this help campaign strategizing in any way? Well, my feeling is that it doesn’t really provide a lot of useful information on campaigns I’m already working on - I have mountains of data from these campaigns and I know what keywords are working. Although the info about India is certainly interesting, as are the handful of articles about endometriosis.
Where I really see this tool helping me is in the preliminary research phase of an online marketing campaign. At least, I’ll know that more people are searching for “eczema” than they are for “toe fungus” over the past two years - and believe me, that looks great all graphed up in a PPT presentation! (the trends not the toe fungus).
The best part of the service (in my opinion) are the links to the articles which appear next to the trend chart. It’s very interesting to see news stories that correspond with spikes in search activity, and it seems like a good way to quickly get some background information on a given topic.
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May 11th, 2006
I love looking at someone else’s PPC Campaign - particularly campaigns on Google because it’s so darned easy to generate reports. A colleague of mine, Nick (owner of Hot Sauce Blog and www.sweatnspice.com) put it succinctly. Nick says that looking a someone else’s PPC campaign is like looking in their wallet.Â
Here are some of the metrics I routinely review and disect when evaluating an existing, or past, PPC campaign.
- Daily spend activity: Generating a daily account summary report enables me to see the daily trends for the campaign’s spend, clicks, average ad position and impressions (searches) at a glance. It’s easy to graph this for a great 10,000 foot view on campaign performance during whatever time period is specified.
- Keyword Summary Report: This report shows the top performing keywords in a given campaign for a given time frame. It’s helpful to break this campaign report down by month, to see what the month-to-month trends have been and whether increased activity for a certain month can be attributed to external events (e.g., world events for a political campaign, for example or offline marketing of a sale for an e-commerce site).
- Ad Copy Report - This report shows me how each ad performed during the life of the campaign and gives me valuable knowledge about what ads people clicked on. It not only helps me review how people responded to the campaign’s messaging, it gives me more insight into the receptivity of certain ad groups based on ad copy (e.g., one ad group may be more receptive to the “Big Sale” and while another may be more receptive to the “Huge Selection” ad).
Other things I look at: The overall cost per click (CPC) for a given campaign - is it really high? Search to click conversion rates (anything below 1% for a keyword campaign = not good), overall click to sale conversion rate (if available), was content or site targeting used, were there vast swings in campaign performance, either for better or worse, across any of the topline metrics. For example, did the CTR suddenly drop from 2% to .3%. If so, why?
I use the above information to formulate a point of view with a list of recommendations for campaign optimization and improvement. In most cases the goal is to unearth “what went wrong” for campaigns that underperformed, went over budget or did not convert well.
So…what’s in your wallet?
May 8th, 2006
I’m compelled by my sense of industry chivalrousness to post an update on the Yahoo campaign-going-dark situation which alleviates Yahoo of some blame. It turns out that the IO which was faxed four days ago (for the May flight dates), had the wrong account number associated with it.
 Not only that, but the Yahoo rep who helped me today called me back three times (a minor miracle) and ultimately assured me that the correct IO (which I refaxed this afternoon) had been received by their accounting department.
So, oops, on my part for the wrong account number.
Yet Yahoo’s customer service still sucks in so many ways. Let’s count them, shall we?
- If there was a problem with the original IO back on 4/26, why didn’t anyone from Yahoo give me a ringy dingy to let me know?
- How come it took the rep ALL DAY to call me back and let me know there was a problem with the same IO, which I refaxed today?
- Why does it take 24-48 hours for a campaign to go back online when an IO is involved anyway?
- My campaign is still dark.
Is it just me? I know it can’t just be me.
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May 2nd, 2006
About 85% of my day is spent managing paid search campaigns for various clients. For large campaigns, I deal with Yahoo! Search and Google as a typical media agency.
We issue IOs which have the campaign dates and amounts and then we are billed monthly based on actual media spend. This gives us a couple of advantages to prepaying or having a credit card charged every time a campaign balance is low.
- We are not actually committed to spend the IO amount. We can throttle down the campaign if we meet our campaign goals from other media sources.
- We can never overspend. Our campaign will go down until the next IO is created. This obviously takes some campaign management to prevent any down-time, but the tradeoff is that we never exceed our budget which can easily happen if a credit card is being charged automatically.
What works in our favor, is not necessarily in Yahoo’s best interest however and this is clear when dealing with Yahoo as an invoiced client.  Yahoo is really not set up to handle invoicing in a rational customer-friendly manner. Their system is very much the same as it was eight years ago - built upon self-serve advertising which enables you to start a camaign and pay for it without ever having to speak with a Yahoo employee.
Ah, the good old days.
Piss Poor Customer Service
As an agency advertiser, I occasionally have reason to call Yahoo and discuss a campaign issue or problem (generally relating to the IO process). When this happens, I get a different person each time I call. Even if I request the same person, I am told “I can help you with this.” Why do I get shuffled around from drone to drone? Because I am only a “premium” customer as opposed to “Gold” or “Platinum.” My agency does not spend enough money to warrant our own customer service representative. Yet.
This system of shuffling the consumer around from one rep to another would be fine if it worked. But it does NOT work. Campaigns go dark. IOs must be refaxed again and again (we had to fax the SAME IO 4 times last month). When campaigns go dark it makes me look bad. It makes my agency look bad and it makes the client very unhappy.
Plus it’s money lost. Why would Yahoo turn away money? Because of comical incompetence? Perhaps. More like a smug certainty that they will always attract advertisers simply because they’re Yahoo, man! They’re search! They’re the only OTHER tier one engine.
Enter Google
Oh the relief! Dealing with Google is like applying ice to my bruised and battered skull (bruised from repeatedly hitting it against the wall when trying to deal with Yahoo).
Google does the following:
- Assigns dedicated customer service reps for both billing and campaign management needs
- Creates the IOs themselves (we have to fill out our own IOs for Yahoo, which they then promptly lose)
- Checks in with us if the campaign budget gets low or if the campaign (heaven forbid) is dark
- Does not make us feel guilty for having less than 200K per month to spend on search.
Their user interface kicks ass too. It’s easy to launch a campaign. Easy to generate a report. Easy to stop and start groups of keywords or ads. As a result, I routinely recommend spending more money on Google and, in fact, my agency spends about FIVE TIMES the amount on Google as they do on Yahoo. To some clients, it’s all “search” and they will follow the recommendation of allocating more to one vendor than another based on the agency’s expertise.
So, Yahoo, if you’re listening - shape up. As a media planner and search marketer, I have the power to put more of my client’s media dollars into Google, or MSN or [insert new tier I search vendor to replace Yahoo here].
I get better customer service from my cell phone company than I do from Yahoo - and that’s without planning to spend $100,000 (or more) on cell phone service this year.Â
posted by Jackie
May 2nd, 2006
