Lori Weiman wrote an interesting piece on Search Engine Land a few hours ago, the article focused on a different type of click fraud. PPC Ad impersonation occurs when an impostor advertiser takes a well known website address, and uses it as the display URL of their own advertisement. From the article: When you first hear about PPC fraud rings, you tend to think of click fraud where an … [Read more...]
eBay: Search Ads Have No Measurable Benefit
eBay study warns search ads have 'no measurable benefit The Guardian did a story on the efficacy of paid search based on a study conducted by eBay From the article: Customers are just as likely to click on natural search results as paid ads, a US study has found, raising questions about the efficacy of the multi-billion dollar search advertising market. The researchers found that most … [Read more...]
Counterfeiters Using Google Adwords is a Big Problem
Randy Pickard made a guest post on Search Engine Land that took a look at all the counterfeiters buying ads on Google that trick consumers into buying knock off goods. The article looked at a few categories, one being prom dresses. From the article: Among the websites buying AdWords sponsored ads for [prom dress] related terms, approximately half of these websites are filled with … [Read more...]
How one Google Algorithm Change Can Damage A Business
There was an article over at Motley Fool yesterday by Adam Levy that took a look at how one Google algorithm changed can ruin a business. The article discussed the recent Panda change and the effect on RetailMeNot. From the article: Last week, shares of RetailMeNot (NASDAQ: SALE ) slid over 20% over the course of two days after a report from SearchMetrics found that the website's visibility … [Read more...]
RetailMeNot Sees it Stock Get Whacked By Google Algorithm Update
RetailMeNot is see its stock get hit hard by the recent Google algorithm change. Barry Schwartz wrote on Search Engine Land: On Tuesday, Google pushed out their revised Panda Algorithm code-named Panda 4.0. Panda is designed to remove low-quality content from Google’s search results. Yesterday, we published an early Winners & Losers report on which large sites were impacted the most both … [Read more...]
Google Extends “Not Provided” to Paid Search
Google is making a change that will bring paid search in line with organic search when it comes to relaying referrer information. Now when people using secure search click on AdWords ads, they will not have their search query show up in the referrer string, this info will no longer be available in analytics packages and third party providers of related software. Ginny Marvin wrote on Search … [Read more...]
Microsoft and the Bing Entity Engine
Frederic Lardinois wrote a piece on Tech Crunch tonight about Microsoft and their plan for their entity engine. The entity engine is Microsoft's answer to the Google Knowledge Graph. These products are not the most desirable from a web developer standpoint. Google and Bing would both like to give people using their search engine a direct answer, keep them on their site and lessen the need to click … [Read more...]