Confession of a Googletizer

Let's face it. Google dominates the pay-per-click market and is THE benchmark for search engine.

Translation: if you engage in any manner of online marketing, you are a Googletizer.

Like me.

I used to have very warm and fuzzy feelings toward Google but I do wonder if the recent success, financial and otherwise, of Google is turning it into your typical hi-tech bumbling hydra since there are so many things going on in those campuses.

My last post noted Google's attempt at dictating how a word/expression should be used (whitepaper, bad; white paper, good). Now, I noticed that my ads are showing up at unexpected places. As a Googletizer, one of the main value of Google service vis-a-vis other PPC vendors is that Google seems to be pretty good at keeping its words and leveling the playing field. So, I was very surprised when my ad shows up at a location that looks like a link-farm - a website that offers nothing but links where the site operator gets paid when a viewer clicks on a link. However, as a Googletizer, I am most adverse to link farms because it does not provide high quality clicks and the operator has incentive to create click-fraud to boost their own earning. (The Economist even noted operations in China where people are hired to click on these links to generate money.)

For this and other reasons, I have opted opted out the Content Network option with Google to minimize this kind of exposure. So, imagine my annoyance when I found a click that come from a site that is a link farm (no search capability and no meaningful content). I filed a request to Google support asking for clarification of policy and how to avoid this kind of exposure. I got a reply assuring me that Google does its utmost to have the right content site operating for my ad's. I then replied with "but I have opted out of Content network." Google gets back with a comparison between the Content and Search network and advise me that if I wish to opt out of a specific site, I can do so from the Content network option. (But, I have opted out Content network completely?!)

Anyway, suffices to say that I am not impressed with this kind of service and find their black-box process wanting. I am perfectly willing to accept the argument that I have stumbled onto a special micro-site run by Google to improve my performance. that would have been kind of cool... But, at least be forthcoming about it!

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Anyway, I recently read David Ogilvy's Confession of an Ad Man. He is my new hero. He is nothing like the average advertising types that I know - thank god!

Anyway, my latest experiment with Google is to separate out the winners from the pack and give them their own campaign. The idea being that these VIP's will get special treatment with better budget allocation to ensure good ad placement. For the rest of the pack, I will just use the auto-budget option.

The auto-budget option is not a bad thing, if you do NOT accept any of the Google suggested parameters. There is nothing inherently wrong with Google's suggestion. But, Google gives you the average and, unless you only aspire to be average, you should not take the face value.

Yes, my grand theory of inter-temporal black box optimization. I had some additional thoughts about it over the past few days when things are less crazy. I think it comes down to the ability to set out a systematic program to optimize from component level to system level. For example, selecting the keywords is the typical first step. Then, use the web log to optimize the keyword selection. Then, there are all sorts of tricks for keywords in terms of capitalization, order, and matching options. Then, the typical second step is to optimize the bid price. I have found it usually take a few days to get a good baseline and it is a constant adjustment between auto-budget and manual control.

I think one of the key points in the process is figuring out how to know when enough is enough. For example, how do you decide that a keyword/ad is a dud. For the longest time, I was thinking in units of time. It is a good proxy for similar campaigns. However, for a brand new campaigns where there is no basis for comparison, time is a tricky thing. Somebody suggested that I consider the number of impressions. This is actually quite an enlightening idea for me, I know - it does not take much to impress me. So, instead of waiting for two weeks, it has to wait for X impressions. Rumor has it that 1,000 is the magic number for Google engine. Of course, one early caveat is that if your keyword selection is rather poor, it may take forever to get to the 1,000 mark and, consequently, risking introducing too much temporal distortion into the analysis.

Speaking of temporal distortion, how does viewer/user preference change over time is another topic that I find fascinating. The key question being that how do I go about capturing the change at the earliest possible time? For example, in the old days (of course Al Gore has not invented the internet then...) people may search for a "personal computer" but at some point people would search for "PC" only and these days people probably only search for "Dell". So, how do I capture that shift in viewer/user behavior?

Another experiment that I am embarking on is SEO, search engine optimization. The idea being that PPC is still relatively expensive. And, as viewers sophistication increases, the legitimacy of a high natural search ranking is significantly higher than the paid-for high ad ranking. I have engaged in some SEO on the corporate site before, but it was a bit clumsy and difficult. My latest insight is to break the process into compartmentalized pages. So, instead of optimizing for the top five terms that I want for index.html, I can have five individual pages optimized for these terms and have it linked into index.html. On the face of it, the idea makes a great deal of sense and I am hoping to get these SEO pages implemented in the next week or so. This would indeed be a very exciting experiment for me.

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Happy 2006!

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A whitepaper on printing Googlster in color

Hmm... I thought Christmas/New Year would be a bit less hectic. Trust me, it ain't.

Oh, one cool news. A buddy is getting the Rank Prize in UK. He finished his Ph.D. in Biology/Quantum-Chemistry in four years. Just don't ask me to explain what he does.

Dr. M. Bruchez http://www.rankprize.org/news1.htm

**
You know, I have always been somewhat of a fan of Google. But, the real question is are the Googlsters turning into the Evil Empire like Microsoft of yore? I am seeing disturbing signs.

Recently, I was notified that I was using an unapproved word in my Google AdWords ad. For those of you not in-the-know this usually happens when you have a typo or used a copy righted term in your pay-per-click ad. (This may apply to obscene words, but I never tried/checked. Honest!) Guess what was my offence. I used the term "whitepaper" while the officially sanctioned term according to Google is "white paper".

When did Google become the last word in English spelling and styles? Shouldn't the menace of Mountain View, aka Googlsters, stick to making unseemly profit and leave the business of language to the everyday folk who uses it? I am sure that the good people of OED, Oxford English Dictionary, would not approve.

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This being the holiday season, I am happy to report that I got my gift/toy today - a laser color printer. I may have mentioned that the current printer is kunking out and I am spending way too much nursing the beast when I need to print stuff.

The good news is that I was able to install the sucker physically including the duplex option. The bad news is that I have not been able to install the software driver and I cannot even see the machine on the network.

Time to call in the pro's. I've logged a request to our IT support team and hope to start printing 'em color stuff in a few days.

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There is no story

I was originally planning to talk about my grand theory of Inter-temporal Black Box Optimization. But, you know what, at this hour, I do not believe that I have enough energy to explain what it is. Maybe I will work it out over the Christmas timeframe. It basically treats the Google engine as a black box and seeks to optimize the output for a given input across time.

At least the title sounds impressive.

**
So, I am still very much knee deep in the website revamp purgatory. On one hand, it is gratifying to be able to mold the output so closely. On the other hand, it is a huge emotional and energy drain. I am now working from each branch of the website structure. About half way through but I have started from the easy ones.

The other thing is that I still need to add the SEO (search engine optimization) and other ancillary services designed and hooked up to the new website. Man! This is going to take a while.

Sent out a blast to an industry vertical where we are seeing some traction. The mechanics of sending out blast is not that big of a deal as I have done it a number of times. The trouble is how to massage the information into the CRM. There is also the issue of marketing vs sales view of the world. Marketing (me) wants to hit enough of the audience to make the effort worthwhile since it is the same costs. Sales (Mr Proper) only wants to hit the very narrow subset of people that he has in mind. To the extent that my targets are a super-set of his targets, you would have thought this is a pretty straight forward discussion. But, no sirree bob. I think I've spent more time negotiating the structure of the targets than the time I've spent on doing the blast.

Me bitter? Never.

Oh, we also made a bunch of Happy New Year card. It is a good idea and it is a nice gesture. the trouble is that we do not have most of the people's mailing address! In this day and age, the key information to capture is email and phone number and until now, we have done a rather poor job of capturing the mailing address. So, we will work on these. My plan is to have the initial fill-in-the-blank done by early next week so I can scrub the final list and get everything out either Friday or the following Monday.

So my fiasco of the week is the conversation with an IT trade reporter.

The background is that we bagged a major medical school as a customer and I have been pushing the PR firm to shop the story around. The first reporter flaked on us and the PR firm found a replacement reporter.

The reporter talked with the customer first and, before talking with the reporter, I was warned that there could be some tough questions on what has changed, product-wise, since the last time this publication covered us. Fair question and I quickly assembled a list of new features and accomplishments since that last coverage. Ever the boy scout.

So, this is the gist of the exchange with the reporter (C = Chief Chicken Headless, R = Reporter)
==
C: Since the last coverage we have come up with a new configuration which is used by this customer
R: What is the difference between the customer from the last coverage to the new customer this time?
C: The new customer uses a new configuration whereas the prior customer uses a different one.
R: But, it basically does the same thing despite the differences in configuration.
C: That is a fair point in that it fulfills the same business needs, but we are pretty excited about the new configuration and the school loves it. And, this is a new release.
R: When was the release?
C: About two months ago.
R: This is not news
C: We think that the new customer represents a new way of looking at this critical user issue. Their users have all the IT infrastructures but they cannot address these needs effectively. Our product provides the ability to "level the playing field" and effectively solve these concerns.
R: Surely the old customer does the same thing
Y: This is the first customer who came to us and told us explicitly this is the reason they needed our solution. The solution also provides a slew of backend management tools that has helped the IT administration of this key user needs.
R: Yeah, that is a new customer not a new story
C: We think this is a brand new way of looking at this user issue and the customer has clearly articulated the underlying issue that are often difficult to articulate by most of the IT people
R: ... Not enough of a news
C: Would you be interested in getting information on the school's case study
R: That's okay, I've already talked with the school
==
and then it loops back to the top - "this is a new configuration"

I do not fault the reporter for asking tough questions but it was a bit frustrating to have to keep repeating the same thing knowing full well that he will retort with the same too. Obviously, we did not go into an infinite loop but the various overtures and explicit questioning of what will be enough of a story from me did not yield anything.

If I did not know any better, I would have fired the PR firm for not prepping the reporter ahead of time. And, of course, I am sure that it will be a funny story in ten years.

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