Check out this news story :
“Google’s (GOOG) U.S. paid-click growth in March was as bad as in February — up only 2.7% — rounding out a violent deceleration in Q1…”
Looks like the party’s over.
Potential causes according to the article :
“1. Google’s ongoing efforts to improve both lead quality for advertisers and the user experience for searches.
2. A macroeconomic dampening of commercial queries by searchers”
I long suspected that this would eventually happened.
After getting hammer with Google Slap after Google Slap many advertiser have gotten so fed up that they have reduced or just stopped advertising on Adwords.
The fact is Google’s attempt to weed out “low quality” sites has really hurt a lot of legit advertisers (and affiliates).
Then if you try to actually call Google and ask them why your campaign was effectively shut down you get a generic canned response from someone who has no idea what they’re talking about.
And who defines what amounts to “low quality” and what “improves the user experience”?
Google does, that’s who!
Here’s the million dollar question:
Now that Google’s theory that cutting out a large numbers of “low quality” site out of their paid search results will improve the user experience and therefore encourage more people to click on paid ads (and bring them back to Google more often) has collapsed will Google continue to hammer us with more Google Slaps or cool of a little???
I suspect now that they see their bottom line falling, they’re going to ease off with the Google Slap mania.
Your thought?
#30
This could very well be true but people have been saying this since Google went public 2-3 years ago and the only thing that has happened is that Google’s competition has fallen further behind not closed the gap.
I definitely think Google needs competition but there is no one right now that can provide it.
Yahoo? No way. I mean they are seriously considering right now outsourcing their search ads to Google. Probably won’t happen but the fact Yahoo has confirmed they are considering this shows that they are in no position to compete.
Microsoft? Not a chance. Their search volume is pathetically low even if it does convert pretty good from my experience. If they acquire Yahoo it will be 12-18 months minimum before all the merger stuff has settled and the search platforms properly merged. In the meantime Google will have rolled out dozens of new tweaks and changes that will ultimately make their system even better.
There is no one in the search business that poses any threat to Google right now.
Social networking is huge right now but it is entirely different than search and while the traffic volumes may be there social networking is unable to provide the one key ingredient….people who are in a buying mindset.
Social networking is not about buying products and services, evidence from my campaigns shoe traffic from myspace.com is HUGE but is the worst converting traffic my sites get. I block them automatically when I create a new content campaign.
See, that is the rub, by dominating search Google controls access to the largest pool of “buyers” in the world. Social networking doesn’t provide that right now. So until Google gets competition in search or social networking evolves in a commercial way Google is in complete control.
Noted,Jeremy.Thanks for the input.
Now Yahoo has started the same..
You want to teach elitist Google/Yahoo a lesson, stop buying from their ads. Look for direct affiliate links [not ad sense] at other sites.
Also advertises must pay better to affiliates when they are bleeding at those search engines.
A corporation only exists to make profit for its shareholders. That’s it. Google makes the rules. If you want to play the game, learn those rules. If your site gets slapped, figure out the solution. If you aren’t a shareholder, Google owes you nothing.
In the old days if you wanted to place an ad in a magazine and the content didn’t pass the editiorial approval team it didn’t run… no matter how much money you waived at them. The same rings true for Google. Irrespective of whether YOU think your content is good, if the Big G. says ‘no’ take it on the chin and try again.
I have spend more than 20 K GBP last year on one of my niche campaigns. The campaign survived 1 slap but than was slapped – usually i was bidding up to 50p – now it asks 5 GBP per click. I stopped it. I spoke with 3 AdWords representative at exhibition in London – all of them were not able to explain me why they dont need my money anymore. On the opposite I was showing them a competitive listing of one shopping comparison web site which dont even has the product in the shopping list – just sponsored links – pure PPC arbitrage style. I believe many advertisers stopped spending a lot of money on adwords and this is something that shareholders has to know and be warned.
I guess it’s all about balance.
The intentions are right, and slaps DO help weed out the better players, but the bad thing is that sometimes people get slapped by google reps who DON’T know what they’re doing.