Doug’s Mouthpiece – Droug.co.uk

Drug Cartels – oh sorry Travel Cartels and google adwords bidding

Google, Online Stuff for Saddos written by Doug Scott

Isn’t this illegal?

Straight from Travolution:

A number of UK travel companies would consider “gentleman’s agreements” to prevent escalating keyword costs as a result of Google’s decision to scrap trademark protection.

Travolution has learned that discussions have already taken place between major travel companies from a variety of sectors after Google reversed a long-standing policy to protect bidding on company brand names.

Some travel companies are also seeking legal advice in a bid to ensure rivals and other travel agencies do not exploit the switch.

It is feared that a sudden open playing field will produce an extremely costly bidding war between major players in the industry.

As a result, it is believed that informal discussions have taken place behind the scenes between rival companies to agree not to bid on one another’s brand names.

Other senior executives across the industry contacted by Travolution have confirmed they would be interested in an informal arrangement to prevent escalating keyword costs.

Travolution reported last week that one leading UK travel brand estimated that 25% of its current PPC budget might be needed to protect its brand name in Google search.

Another major company executive suggested a similar figure this week if the widely expected “feeding frenzy” takes place.

One senior figure told Travolution: “There is a desire for this to not to get completely out of hand and therefore it makes sense for like-minded companies to come to some agreement.”

It is widely feared that a similar situation to that which occurred in the US in 2004 will take place in the UK when the trademark ban is lifted in early-May.

“There was so much money blown in those first few weeks it was incredible. We do not want to be in that situation again,” an executive who worked in the US at the time said this week.

A Google spokesman said: “Brands have always been able to come to an agreement amongst themselves and this new policy does not change that position.”

How will it effect our little old travel agency?

Doug not bidding

Popularity: 1% [?]

Take the money and run – buy.at is that ethical?

Affiliate Money Grabbers, Google written by Doug Scott

Affiliate Networks are encoraging brand bidding groups with the new adwords changes……you are taking the p**. What happened to honour, integrity etc etc etc.

Merchants if they are advising you to do it then your network has no integrity….Read Buy.at’s official line for Tyson here. Come off it mate we all know the game. Scam a stupid merchant. As a merchant ask yourself:

As a merchant you should easily be able to work out a way to protect your brand with these changes. Shane the pie man is no fool and always been a guy good at seeing an opportunity to exploit but he is even astonished. Read his views on what should happen here.

When I was a merchant we said no brand bidding groups as we thought it unfair to the affiliates who do the real work and find the ppc traffic you can’t find or the content players who bring related traffic from organic.

As a large affiliate we don’t bid on our partners brands intentionally even though we know it works well. We just feel it’s not correct and it leaves a sour taste in our relationships.

My concern here becomes the ones where affiliates who drive traffic that a merchant would have not being credited with a sale, but a brand bidding affiliate getting the sale.

If I was a “true” affiliate in that area I know I would not be promoting merchants who allowed brand bidding affiliates. The simple economics are that I would be loosing sales that were rightly mine.

Another interesting story

Doug

Popularity: 2% [?]

Adwords Quality Score

Google, Uncategorized written by Doug Scott

So your boss:

is planning an online marketing campaign and there’s all this jargon flying around which you have no clue about. Quality Score what? you ask. Now before you go ahead and show your ignorance at the brainstorming session that makes your boss finally sign the firing letter that has been on his desk, read on.

Quality Score is a variable which is dynamic and which is allocated to every one of your keywords. It is computed using various factors and it quantifies the relevancy of your keyword vis-à-vis the text in your advert and the search word the user has submitted.

Quality Score affects the position of your ads on Google and the Google Network. It also goes towards determining your keywords’ minimum bids. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the better your ad position and the lower your minimum bids.

The main use of Quality Score is to help guarantee that only the ads with the highest relevancy appear to users on the Google search engine as well as the Google Network. The AdWords system works best for users, advertisers, website owners and Google as well when the text ads that get displayed match the users’ requirements as closely as possible. Ads that have the highest relevancy tend to get more users clicking, are displayed in a higher and more strategic position and bring the advertisers the most success.

The formula used in computing or assigning the Quality Score fluctuates and it all depends on whether it is minimum bids being computed or it is the ad position being assigned or determined. It also varies depending on whether it is a keyword-targeted ad or a placement-targeted ad. It also varies depending on whether the keyword-targeted ad will be featuring on a search network or a content network.

While Google is consistently and regularly trying to refine its Quality Score formulae, the core components never change and if they do they remain more or less the same.

When computing a keyword’s minimum bid the factors that go into consideration include the keyword’s historical clickthrough rate on the Google search engine but excluding the clickthrough rate on the Google Network. Others include how pertinent the keyword is to the ads in its ad group; the state of the landing page; the account history which is determined by the clickthrough rate of all the ads and keywords in your account and other factors which may be deemed pertinent.

On the other hand when computing the chances of a keyword-targeted ad appearing on a particular content site as well as the likely spot of the text ad on that website, factors such as the ad’s past performance on the particular website and similar websites are taken into account. Others include the relevancy of the ads and keywords in the ad group to the website, the condition of the landing page and other factors which may be deemed important.

Finally, what determines if a placement-targeted ad will appear on a particular website is the condition of the landing page.

Check out these for more info:

How to build a page that wont get banned with examples

How to retain Google history in AdWords Editor

Doug perplexed

Popularity: 2% [?]