Be Afraid?
Posted by tim on March 31, 2005 at 10:23 AM
So it's not really a great cause for alarm, but I had a strange feeling when I read about the launch of the new search engine Blingo.
The basic premise is that Blingo is like any other search engine (powered by Google in fact), but every time you run a search, you have a chance to win a prize. From Blingo's own press release:
"Visitors to the Blingo website search for words or phrases, just like on other popular search engines, but at Blingo each search is also a chance to instantly win prizes. This month, Blingo prizes include Apple iPods, Amazon gift certificates, TiVo DVRs with a year subscription, Blockbuster subscriptions, or free movie tickets.
"Whenever users search at Blingo, they automatically qualify to win the kinds of prizes everyone wants. Several times a day, Blingo picks a winner at random and ships the prize to the lucky searcher. During its five month beta period, Blingo has given away nearly 2,000 prizes to Blingo users in all 50 of the United States."
For the most part, this is all fine. Kudos to Blingo for a fun idea. Somehow it must be making sense for them from a business stand point, so bully and all that. As one who manages AdWords campaigns though, a site like this raises a few concerns for me. I might be too cynical, but if so, that's part of the hardwiring and I probably can't do too much to change that now.
Here's my big question. Why run a search at Blingo, instead of Google, for any reason other than the chance to win? And, if searchers at Blingo are only putting in searches in the hopes of winning, do they really care what the results are? So, you have probably thousands of searches, performed by completely unmotivated end users, showing ad after ad. Gee, seems like this might artificially inflate my impression numbers, even though they are "real" searches by "real" people.
Forgive me for a lack of enthusiasm, but there's already enough trouble lurking in the shadows of PPC advertising, do we really need to make the shadows this much longer.
Hopefully I'm way off base. Hopefully the fine folks behind this project have considered steps to protect advertisers already. Hopefully.
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag
Posted by tim on March 15, 2005 at 11:32 AM
We've been quiet here for the last couple of weeks. Lots going on. We moved our SEO firm into spacious new surroundings recently, giving us all a little bit more elbow room and plenty of space to grow. There's also been some reflection going on for this blog.
When we set out, our intent was to be another resource to help more traditional communications agencies (PR, ad, branding, etc.) understand the search game. As the name implies, we've always wanted to give an unfiltered view, from our corner of the world, about what's going on in search.
While this key belief will continue to remain constant, we're going to spread the focus out a bit more. Change will probably be subtle (like a new bag). More than anything, we're giving ourselves license to talk about a little bit broader spectrum of topics as they relate to search engine optimization.
More on Click Fraud
Posted by tim on March 03, 2005 at 10:34 AM
It may be coincidence, it might have something to do with the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York right now, but whatever it may be, click fraud is still a very hot topic (and me thinks it's becoming a bit of a sore subject as well).
Here are just a few more recent mentions of click fraud. I've covered the topic pretty well, but I just want to share some other view points on this.
Other Shoe on Keyword Prices, Clickfraud - from John Batelle's Searchblog
Click Fraud Experts: Marketers Need More Info From Search Engines - at MediaPost (may require free sub.)
Search Term Of The Moment: Click Fraud: - posted to PaidContent.org by staci
Add to Your Library
Posted by tim on March 01, 2005 at 02:45 PM
File away for rainy day reading.
Some recent reports we've published from the Oneupweb side of things:
How Keyword Length Affects Conversion Rate. In January 2005, Oneupweb conducted a study to determine if the number of keywords in a search query was related to conversion rates. Our hypothesis was that the longer the keyword string, the higher the conversion rate.
Target Google's Top Ten to Sell Online. Oneupweb's broad study demonstrates a clear benefit to being listed on the first three pages of Google's results and describes even greater sales benefits to being listed on the first page.
The very brief summary of all this research says that companies will be best served optimizing for specific, trafficked, and convertable phrases with a goal of a top ten ranking. (Probably not shocking, by any means, but sometimes it's good to have the numbers)
