Google Shares Plummet

Too Bad My Money Isn't Good Enough

[cagey1]

"Google's stock price dropped $52.12, or 9.8 percent, to finish at $481.32...after the Internet search leader's second-quarter earnings missed analysts' expectations."

I used to pay them over $30K per month until some Google Genius came up with Quality Score. Too bad, that might have come in handy for them in the second-quarter.

[Widestrides]

And they said revenue dropped because they served up fewer ads intentionally! I wonder if that meant they decided to show fewer lower-paying ads and instead they repeat the higher-paying ads? Because they seem to always serve up 8 ads per page. I didn't notice how they served fewer ads as an experiment.

So maybe they will realize that it is in their best interest to serve up more ads even if they are lower paying ads. The user wants to browse through more ads.

[poster_boy]

The user wants to browse through more ads.

What research are you referencing with this statement?

[Widestrides]

No research that I know of.

Let me rephrase that:
Maybe they will realize that it is in their best interest to serve up more ads even if they are lower-paying ads. Maybe, the user wants to browse through more ads.

I never noticed them serving fewer ads as an experiment as they say they did. Did you?

[edited by: Widestrides at 6:49 pm (utc) on July 19, 2008]

[netmeg]

For one thing, I think they were talking about search ads, not content - and there are plenty of searches I do that show few or no ads.

And for another thing, you wouldn't necessarily notice any reduction, because the number of ads you would see over a period of time, even as much as three months, would still be only a miniscule percentage of the total ads shown.

And with things like the various Google slaps, yea, they are probably showing fewer ads. There are some business models that can still function with $10 minimum bids, but probably not all that many. After a while, those people give up and move elsewhere. Which is the intention.

[Widestrides]

there are plenty of searches I do that show few or no ads.

Maybe for an informational search, but search for any commercial product or service and I never see less than 10 ads per page - two on the top and eight on the side. But I do see more repetition of the top-paying ads even on the second, third and fourth pages. This is to produce more revenue, but provides fewer unique choices for those who might be browsing deep and would have clicked on more unique ads if more were shown. They'll figure it out.

[coachm]

Google officially announced and explained the reduction of ads shown on searches months and months ago. The algo doesn't treat everyone the same, so you can't go by your own limited experience.

I don't recall mention of reductions on the content network.

[Widestrides]

So could you explain it for us? How and where did the reduce ads?

[mimmo]

Suppose you are bidding on a broad match keyword "tennis shoes".
Last year G would show your ads for search queries such as "nice tennis shoes", "white tennis shoes", etc. Impressions numbers were much higher.

Today G only shows your ads for combinations it finds / "thinks" relevant and with high CTR, even with broad match.

I think Adwords has a fondamental problem: relevancy.

I think ads are not always relevant to your search.
G has no way to decide what ad is relevant.

And users start prioritizing more and more the organic results.
You can pay thousands of dollars, but a little ad on the side of very relevant organic results won't be clicked on.

In our field, companies are paying top dollars and sell very expensive products... they hope to convert maybe 1 in 100 click. Which makes the ad useless and a click a waste of time for the other 99.