My .02

[jilla]

I just got off the phone with goto about matchdriver and the person was trying to tell me how it was helpful to advertisers. I told him that in past I could pay a few cents for certain
misspelled words but now due to match driver the prices are all inflated since the same words can now be over a dollar (someone gave the example of how digtial camera now is redirected to the digital camera price).

When I asked him about this, he changed his explanation and told me that people often don't click on the most expensive terms so I could still continue to bid for a few cents on words. I told him that goto states on the site (or used to) that the click through rate was much higher for being in the top positions.

What it seems to me is going on is that companies that pay a lot for popular words will now have many misspelled ones redirected and be paying the same price and stay at top. This way goto can get close to a dollar for words rather than a few pennies that they would otherwise be getting since big companies don't usually propsect for every variation and rare permuatation of a word or phrase. Those people who don't want to outbid those prices probably will just make doorway pages that can get indexed in inktomi for free since probably not too many optimize digtial cameras.

My .02, I mean my .99 due to inflation.

Debbie

[Mike_Mackin]

Debbie:

It is your 2¢.
You are in charge of your budget.

You have many options open to you.
Just stop bidding those KWs at goto is just ONE.

You have to figure that the surfer was after KW when he/she typoed. They are getting relevant results.

So if that makes you mad, take some $$$ away from goto.com and spend it elsewhere to get your average down.

You expect THIS MANY CLICKS for your money.
You have to do what it takes to make that happen.
You can give the money to goto OR any other souce that will make that happen.

[minnapple]

Debbie, I am right there with you.

It takes time, but breaking the matchdriver system can be done. I really don't mind giving GoTo money for traffic, but I hope that they remember that their hardest working customers, (giving their clients traffic at the lowest clicks) will be their (GoTo's) longest clients. I for one am backing off of my top bids until if figure this whole thing out. So far I have reduced my GoTo spending by 25% but only seen a 8% reduction in GoTo traffic. Time to revisit this PPC positioning.

[jilla]

Minnapple: I am backing off on bidding
too and don't want to spend a lot of time bidding on words that will only be redirected to 1.00 words. Perhaps goto will realize that many of their loyal customers were spending a lot of time looking for the non-competitive phrases and that to just give them away via redirection using matchdriver would mean we'd be taking our business elsewhere. There is a very interesting thread now at searchenginesforum where it appears that someone has reached an individual high up at goto and his concerns on match driver are being seriously reviewed. He pointed out that the end user won't be pleased if he gets the same results over and over again which is what the redirection process will be doing.

Deb