In the next few months, I’ll be writing an article for a search engine marketing publication about “search engine marketing myths.” Believe me, there are dozens of them, but I’ll be limiting myself to no more than ten or so. This topic got me to thinking about SEM facts – irrefutable truths that everyone in the industry accepts. Here’s my random list – please feel free to comment and add others to the list: 1. Google and Yahoo drive good traffic, anything else is bound to be risky; … Continue reading →

In the late 19th and early 20th century, industrialists like Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt created vast empires of factories, shipping companies, and warehouses. These “men of industry” represented all that was good and evil in America during that period. On the one hand, they brutally abused their power, gobbling up small companies through monopolistic (and unfair) practices, providing unsafe workplaces and non-living wages, and at the same time building massive mansions of extreme decadence. But they also founded some of the greatest institutions of our time, like … Continue reading →

I recently discussed whether click fraud was truly a problem for Google. I conclude that it isn’t really – at least until the hordes of new & naive advertisers stop buying ads on Google and Google is forced to rely exclusively on sophisticated advertisers for their revenue. For second-tier search engines, however, the story is different. By “second tier”, I basically mean any search engine that isn’t Google, Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. So that includes Ask, Kanoodle, Miva, Mamma, 7Search, Quigo, Industry Brains, etc, etc. On many of … Continue reading →

This is a desktop tool we’ve been playing with for a while. Now publicly available here: http://services.google.com/adwordseditor/index.html By the way, for those of you who read my blog regularly, you may recall my four-part post on how MSN and Yahoo can take down Google. You’ll note that Part Two of this epic posting was dedicated to user interfaces. Of course, I was suggesting that Overture change their user interface to reach parity with AdWords’ already far-superior interface. I guess now that AdWords isn’t resting on its laurels, Overture … Continue reading →

I was walking down the street last week and a charming young lady came up to me and asked “is click fraud a major problem for search engine marketers?” OK, it was actually a co-worker that sits next to me who asked the question, but I thought it sounded more intriguing the other way. I digress . . . Click fraud does get a lot of hype these days, especially in reference to Google’s seemingly inflated stock price. To me, click fraud is like any other type of … Continue reading →