MikaelTC - 12:03 am on Aug 3, 2006 (gmt 0)

I would have imagined that advertisers would be safe from the uncertainties of algorithms until this late unpleasantness set in. The method you linked to in your post seems like a good defense against a random loss, but from the reports of advertisers who were shut out of their campaigns seem to indicate that there is some (admittedly opaque) criteria for site evaluation. It's like there's a checkpoint and the guard asks you "Who is Mickey Mouse?" before he lets you through; it doesn't matter how diverse your campaign is because it isn't a random event.

Anyway, a lot of MBA folks seem to like to throw around the idea of the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of your revenue/traffic/sales/enjoyment will come from 20% of your customers/advertising/sales force/activities. They apply this rule to all sorts of things professionally and personally in order to make themselves more efficient. If you find that five of your keywords are generating the majority of your revenue make sure that you are getting the most out of them. You should diversify, of course, because the market may change and you need to know that and already be there with your next five (or ten, or a thousand); but first make sure that you're living in today while you're preparing for tomorrow.

Finding your top keywords shouldn't be too hard, just get a list of your keywords and sort them by revenue (or whatever you want) start at the top. If you really have a very even distribution of revenue over your keywords, then you may not have enough keywords in your set.

[edited by: MikaelTC at 12:10 am (utc) on Aug. 3, 2006]