Forum Moderators: martinibuster
"Your landing pages will continue to require higher bids in order to display your ads, resulting in a very low return on your investment," a Google executive named Nathan Anderson wrote on Jan. 2, 2007. "Therefore AdWords may not be the online advertising program for you."Two days later, in another e-mail message, Mr. Anderson told Mr. Savage to "please refrain from repeatedly contacting our team."
Woof!
Rajiv
Arbitrage getting cut out of the loop is good, very good. I can only hope for more of the same.
I agree but that's not the case yet.
It's only those that Google don't want to do arbitrage, it's selective.
It should be all or none, not fuzzy and grey.
So in my opinion he is not kicked out of adsense but his bidding has increased in Adwords.
We didn't miss that point, we know AdSense is still running.
You miss the point that Google is just arbitrarily pricing him out of business.
How would you like it if someone arbitrarily charged you double or triple to bring customers to your site while everyone else paid lower rates?
That's not a fair business practice whatsoever.
But is he the only one? Haven't there been loads of people whose rates went up, some to even $5 or $10 a click?
It should be all or none, not fuzzy and grey.
If anything they are getting more opaque and more arbitrary as time goes on.
But in as much as eliminating arbitrage is eliminating the middle-man I'm all for it and I applaud Google's action even if cloaked in fuzzy grayness and doesn't apply to all.
It's only those that Google don't want to do arbitrage, it's selective. It should be all or none, not fuzzy and grey.
But the very question of whether a publisher is engaged in arbitrage is "fuzzy and grey." Making that determination requires either human intelligence or an algorithm that takes multiple variables into account.
Consider: Nytimes.com buys traffic with Google AdWords (and AdSense), and it also runs AdSense ads on its pages. Does that mean Nytimes.com is a click arbitrageur? For most of us, the answer would be "Of course not," because (a) THE NEW YORK TIMES is clearly a legitimate and reputable publisher of intrinsically valuable content; and (b) AdSense ads are just one of its revenue streams. That may be hard for someone with an "all or nothing" perspective to grasp, but that doesn't mean Google should be required to view AdSense publishers in binary terms.
Such pages are of little use to anyone except the arbitrageur.
Reorganizing to reduce the number of poorly populated categories might make the algo like the site better.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Man pays Google $5
Google pays man $10
Google makes loss of $5.
This is simple mathematics. If I was Google I wouldn't like that arrangement either!
No, no, you're missing the most important figure here, the advertiser. You forgot the advertiser who is paying Google and the arbitrageur. Google doesn't lose a cent.
And incidentally, if Google's got quality raters for organic search, which doesn't drive revenue, is it 100% impossible that there might be Adwords quality raters with guidelines to follow, when their business model and revenue is involved?
<sidebar>
As a point of interest, in answer to the question I asked at the beginning of this thread about that huge number of homepage backlinks showing at Yahoo, in Spring of 2006 (back around the month when their AW rates went up) SourceTool was, according to their site at the time, charging $199 per year for a "verified" listing which was waived if they gave a homepage text link back. They provided the code to link back as a matter of fact
Additionally, although prior to Spring, in February of that year, they were claiming to be a member-funded initiative, how likely is it that they were a featured site of the week when it plainly said on their site that Spring that while they don't sell advertising, they do benefit from Google Adsense.
</sidebar>
Nothing against the concept of their taxonomy and business model, but how many clicks does it take to finally get to a link to a company's site, and why are those links excluded from bots?
[edited by: Marcia at 2:03 am (utc) on Sep. 15, 2008]
Google doesn't lose a cent.
therefore google makes $7.
right. the missing piece is "man generates clickthrough on another advertiser's ad. Other advertiser then pays google $12."
therefore google makes $7.
When a visitor comes from MFA page to MFA page clicking on ads to land on an other MFA page, the visitor will stop clicking AdSense ads.
So this costs Google and all honest publishers much money.
This is the reason, that I have my 200 competitive ad filter nearly full. I want to ban bad sites.
Thats a typo right?
I wrote:
I didn't see anything all that wrong with his business model, from what little I could tell just by looking at his site. I really don't think the AdSense is the problem there; he doesn't seem like the typical arbitrage site at all.However, the way AdWords works, his site, pretty much by definition would have a hard time maintaining a decent quality score.
You've got three elements that have to be in near perfect sync with each other - the keywords in the adgroup, the text of the ad and the landing page.
With a dynamically driven site like this guy has, and with thousands of different types of businesses listed, it'd be more than three full time jobs just writing and managing AdWords ads and campaigns.
** Generic AdWords advertising doesn't work anymore. **
The whole point of quality score is that Google wants to make sure when someone clicks on an ad, he's going to have a pretty good idea going in what he's going to find when he gets there. This article uses the example of ball bearings - well, that would not be a good quality keyword for him, because his site doesn't sell ball bearings. It may provide listings for vendors of ball bearings, but it doesn't offer ball bearings. So the more proper keyword for him would be "ball bearing suppliers" or "ball bearing vendors"
If I'm looking for ball bearings, Google figures I should know ahead of the click whether or not I'm going to a place where I can actually get them, or I'm going to a list of other places that sell them - even if it's a very good, accurate list with reviews and rankings and everything. So his ad would also have to say that he has listings for ball bearing vendors, and not just the ball bearings.
I know it may seem like a nit picking distinction to some, but all my experience tells me this is the way it works, and until you come to that fundamental understanding where you can see the difference, you're always going to struggle with AdWords.
Which is also why I think the program has outgrown a large part of the market it was originally intended for (small business owners who could run it themselves)
(And for what it's worth, I've been running AdWords to drive traffic to my AdSense monetized event site for a number of years with no problem maintaining 3 cents/click on search)
Which is also why I think the program has outgrown a large part of the market it was originally intended for (small business owners who could run it themselves)
FWIW, that may help to explain why some AdSense publishers are hurting. If, for example, you've got a site about Widgetville B&Bs and the owners of B&Bs in Widgetville find AdWords/AdSense too complicated to deal with these days, the program's increased complexity is likely to be bad from your perspective. It will be interesting to see whether Google can find a way to make AdWords/AdSense less intimidating to the kind of business owner whose media-buying experience is limited to classified ads and two-inch display ads in local newspapers or trade publications. (And if Google can't make AdWords/AdWords more accessible to Wally at the Widgetville Motel, who'll step in to serve that market?)
Ah yes, here it is:
[webmasterworld.com...]
(One thing I sure wish WebmasterWorld had was the ability to link an item into more than one forum, at the moderators' discretion, because there are plenty of issues, particularly with Google AdWords and AdSense, that span more than one niche)
To be fair, that's maybe not a good comparison because Business.com does not seem to be supporting itself primarily through arbitrage. The reporter has a good understanding but might be a bit over his head. Nevertheless he goes on to make an interesting general observation about monopolies, which is at the heart of this story.
The problem with monopolists, of course, is that they just can’t help acting like monopolists, even supposedly benign monopolists like Google and even when they are not consciously trying to rub out the competition. They are always right and everybody else is wrong... They tell small fry like Mr. Savage to stop bugging them.That is how Microsoft acted a decade ago, and that, increasingly, is how Google is acting. Half the time, the company doesn’t even realize how egregious its behavior has become, which is why it feels so misunderstood when it is criticized.
...his story gave me pause, and nothing Google said in its defense defused my alarm. As Mr. Litvack reviews the Google-Yahoo deal, I hope it gives him pause as well.
It could be déjà vu all over again.
But I still don't think it's an AdSense issue nearly as much as an AdWords issue. AdWords, as it's currently set up , is just not a good fit for this type of business model. And with Yahoo and MSN adCenter picking up a lot of Google's QS type attributes, I think he'd eventually had the same problems advertising with them as well.
...could be déjà vu...
These situations develop along the same lines because they are driven by the same thing, human nature, which doesn't change.
Unlike Microsoft, Google's monopoly is not anchored with installed software that is expensive to replace and relearn so their market share can evaporate much more quickly. Their attempts to install their free software into user's brains is evidence that they are acutely aware of this.
They are probably bright enough to wake up before someone else eats their lunch but the arrogance and hubris engendered by monopoly does make more openings for the little furry creatures who are awaiting the asteroid.
Maybe Google's QC staff decided that SourceTool sucks. If so, bad luck for SourceTool. In any case, AdWords/AdSense does not have a monopoly on the generation of traffic or revenue, and a legitimate business directory with intrinsically valuable content should be able to obtain both by other means.
The whole point of quality score
The whole point is why should Google dictate vs. the visitors and the advertisers?
Google is jacking up prices on sites making it clearly an unfair advantage to the advertiser.
Do you think a newspaper charges a different price for some restauarant that did pass health inspection than one that does?
That's what we're talking about here, Google deciding who's the best instead of letting the market decide which kills off businesses daily in the real world.
Google deciding who's the best instead of letting the market decide
It would have taken millions of visitors to generate the kind of income that the site allegedly earned for a while. If so few of those visitors bookmarked or linked to the site that it is paralyzed without AdWords traffic, then the market has indeed decided.
I agree with signor_john that Google has the right to decide what kind of experience it wants to deliver to its own users.
Just like you or I do.
In any case, AdWords/AdSense does not have a monopoly on the generation of traffic or revenue, and a legitimate business directory with intrinsically valuable content should be able to obtain both by other means.
Absolutely untrue. Google has an effective monopoly, a lock on worldwide mind share, and such a huge percentage of the ad business that all the others combined are inconsequential. There are a few isolated places where it faces chalenges in search and advertising but the English speaking world is not one of them.
Unlike Microsoft, this monopoly was positively formed by Google's being the best choice, but now that it exists Google has some very cushy laurels to rest upon and can easily do so. Google will never become lean and mean again, it will continue to bloat like Microsoft.
Absolutely untrue. Google has an effective monopoly, a lock on worldwide mind share, and such a huge percentage of the ad business that all the others combined are inconsequential.
Google does not have "such a huge percentage business that all others combined are inconsequential." That may be true of one advertising category (search and contextual text ads), but so what? Unless the site we've been discussing is a click arbitrageur, why should it have to rely solely on search or contextual text ads for traffic and revenue?
As for IncrediBILL's newspaper analogy, how newspapers set their rates is irrelevant. However, it's worth pointing out that newspapers don't charge uniform rates. For that matter, they exercise the right (and the power) to accept some ads and refuse others.
Google is jacking up prices on sites making it clearly an unfair advantage to the advertiser.
This is a good for most good advertisers.
I visited 2005 ads by the AdSense Preview Tool, where it was very difficult to find the product mentioned in the ad.
With the quality score, this companies think about improving the landing page score, the conversion goes up, the ad prices go down.
So this is a good service from Google for the advertiser.
What is flawed is the execution and I think the mixed messages from the search sites. Its got to make your blood boil if your landing pages are suddenly penalised only to see presumably larger more connected sites (eg Ask.com and others) happily carrying on without a care. A less than level playing field is going to fuel the fires and makes an obvious mockery of the whole QS concept which is what drives some of the anger I am sure.
