The ClickEquations Blog - Latest Comments in The Search Engines: Friend or Foe?

Re: The Search Engines: Friend or Foe?

David - Los Angeles Marketing — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:51:38 -0000

Craig, you're right - and thanks for reminding us. However, some of the transparency did make things suck too... Remember doing the bidding game with overture? Bidding right under the comptetitor? It was fun, but knowing the exact numbers of your competition sucked...

Maybe I really am drinking the "Click Forensics Kool-Aid" to the extreme - have an external agency monitor the data.

But altogether, I don't think much will change. Either way, the market will price itself to the budget that advertisers can make search work for them.

Re: The Search Engines: Friend or Foe?

Dave — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:30:02 -0000

I agree that many advertisers seem to take SE rep suggestions at face value, and I think it is extremely naive. Just look at the default options for PPC accounts/campaigns in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and it is quite obvious they want to maximize clicks and price without much concern for your traffic quality. I used to think Google was the least sneaky, but their new move to hide the columns for conversions, cost per conversion, conversion rate, etc. is really underhanded, IMHO. They would rather get you to focus on traffic volume, hah!