1, Its excellent for the user2, User wont be complaining and will probably not notice that a big change has been made.
and finally since we are paying CPC, that means that it was always only a bonus, and never promised to last anyway :)
so in other words we just gotta move on to the next smart move...
Shak
Bleah!
It bugs me that Google, which is supposed to be my business partner, is helping the competition ... competition that was not, on its own, smart enough to uncover and target those words.
Brains can't compete with money anymore. This will just help the big become bigger.
But I'm lucky! Google's adwords spellchecker has NOT pounced on my keyword mispellings, EVEN THOUGH the Google Serps seem to recognise the mispelling and suggest at the top "did you mean...".
I found an exmaple to share with you (NOT my keyword):
Try searching on Fishing and Fishng.
When I do this in the UK, 'Fishing' gives me a load of advertisers, but 'Fishng' gives me far fewer, even though Google suggests "do you mean Fishing?"
Interesting - I hope this shortcoming continues, but I'm not hopeful.
Very charitable Shak, but we are Google's customers! I don't give a damn about the users other than they should continue to like Google and keep on using it. So if they won't notice the difference this change is serving just one party: Uncle Google.
Doesn't this mean that your CTR has shrunk significantly for certain ads that targetted both "keyword" and "kewyrord"?
but as a business person, i respect google's right to do this. we're not talking just a few nickels here... this could mean millions of dollars for them in the long run. and displaying ads for misspelled keywords certainly meets their need to provide the best possible user experience.
I don't see how Google has the "right" to make money by billing their customers for services that they didn't buy, in this case traffic from keywords other than what they purchased. Shouldn't they at least inform their advertisers *very clearly* when they make changes like this? And offer an opt-out? And make existing customers opt-out by default, since they had no idea when they signed up?
and finally since we are paying CPC, that means that it was always only a bonus, and never promised to last anyway :)
It is only CPC, but when Google takes a stab at what "Meant" to type and is wrong (in my case it was in still is) it affects positioning. The only workaround to not having it show up is using every conceivable typo as a negative keyword, if that even works. Now In my case, I have two words to compete against to make it in the top 3.
I'm not sure what you mean by it wasn't promised, but I was promised an exact match and being able to choose my own keywords that triggered my ad, not Google doing it's own optimizing for me, no matter how good the (perceived) intention.
Still, 6 versus 8 looks like it's not a total automatic import.
I hope Google never goes as far as MSN did last year with Overture ads. They got into linguistics and were matching words that were nearly the same in "meaning", not just misspellings. Only linguistic algorithms are still not all that, you know?
In the same way that Espotting's hand was forced by Overture's decision to increase their minimum to 10p when everyone said they wouldn't I suspect that Google's hand was forced by Overture's Match Driver to come in line with it. Even if you had a 70% revenue margin to give away, if your 70% of 5 cents clicks compares to a 50% revenue share of $3 I know which I'd rather have.
I still see Overture leading and everyone else following.
Even with this being introduced, there will still be mispellings on both Overture and Google (and elsewhere), your task is to find them.
Oh well, google gets more -googly- everyday..
Well, actually, I do know why -- but I wish those complaining would look at the big picture, and not look at it as a personal loss.
A system that allows bidding on misspelled words is a fundamentally flawed one. If the system can properly interpret what the user was seeking, then it's a giant step in the right direction. Naturally there will be some cases where a misspelled word will not be translated properly, but those situations will be far fewer than those that it will properly correct.
Google did mention some adword changes were do this month I just ignored the email when I got it. This must be them.
1) Put revenue above all else.
2) Dumb down everything so far that a big brand advertiser can just throw stuff up without any thought and achieve the same thing they do on TV and everywhere else.
3) Make you spend more $$ for traffic you do and don't want.
In some cases this type of thing does improve targeting and help the end user but software will never be as smart as human no matter how many PHd's are working on it.
Implementation of this type of thing ought to be done on a case by case basis and not automated IMHO (and maybe it is in this case). They could probably improve the bottom line by 80% of what is possible by identifying high $$ mis-spellings on a case by case basis and do it right.
Lets hope they do.
In any case, Google revenue is going to skyrocket, most likely along with click prices, as they make good and not-so-good "improvements" to make setting up AdWords campaigns easier.
But I'm lucky! Google's adwords spellchecker has NOT pounced on my keyword mispellings, EVEN THOUGH the Google Serps seem to recognise the mispelling and suggest at the top "did you mean...".
I would guess a matter of time. It is savy advertisers like you who are showing Google the way. They can just compare the advertising keyword(s) base inventory with a dictionary.
I am probably wrong, but I did not remember any Google email "warning" me for extra clicks towards variations on my specifically stated keywords I did not specify. I guess the temptation for the few extra bucks became blinding ;)
e.g. UK English spelling of optimiSation (opposed to optimiZation).
Although the change is a major one, the traffic is also what you target and want. Just need to pay more for that.
No, it's not what I want, and had to pull a campaign. Wish I could post the actually example, and some might see how flawed this is.
But using "Widgets", when also showing up with "wigets" yields such a low CTR that it would disable the keyword. Of course I could pay more, be more visible under the term I want to be shown on, and keep the minimum CTR. The misspelling is searched for 7 more times than the correct spelling, each time yielding a "Did you mean?"... and the ad. Obviously I can't get into specific conversations other than to say Google has known about it for a few weeks, promised action, and nothing has happened.
There is also a problem with characters. Use #widgets, $widgets, @widgets, etc. It isn't even suggesting a different spelling, just showing up. There is one keyword I did use an exact match on where #widgets is common, and exactly where I don't want to show, and targets an audience I'm trying to avoid buy using an exact match. It totally defeats the purpuse of using an exact match, and negative keywords do not work. Try -widgets, in which all sorts of weird things happen depending on how you match keywords.
I choose [widgets] because I don't want to show up in [widgets -green], yet I still do. *shrug*
How many advertisers are there out there who don't read WW and still have no clue?
We use extensive mispellings in our campaign and they have been very effective. A few weeks ago I saw one of our competitors under a common mispelling of a term we compete under. I couldn't believe he had the knowledge to figure it out based on the balance of his campaign. Now I know why he is there.
I do NOT agree that this is a good thing. Why should our initiative and research now be handed over to the lazy and uninformed. I hate Over's WordMatch and I don't like this. I thought Google was above this kind of backdoor sneakiness.
So you have the option to turn off the spell matcher if you go for exact match. not perfect because you'll need to put in all permutations of phrases, but better than nothing.
[edited by: Shak at 6:46 am (utc) on July 8, 2003]
[edit reason] no email quotes, as per TOS [/edit]
why haven't they done the same thing for the unpaid results too
Perhaps it is the next step. Watch the fire fly then.
This isn't about keywords (to me) as much as it is about trust. They didn't have to notify us per the user agreement, because they didn't modify the FAQ. Certainly Adwords knows when you make a claim, you have to back it up. I doubt you'll see an * next to exact match on their webpage, and if they'll do it with this, they'll do it with other things. They have already.
I would have posted this myself, but just figured I was late in the game, and frankly, don't post much, just read once in awhile. If this surprises you, I can assure you more are in store.
