Not Much Use – IMHO!
Ξ May 14th, 2009 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Geeky |
I’ve been doing a little free web-development for some pals of mine, and, in the course of that, trying to get their website towards the top of all search-engine’s results.
So I was interested when a few days ago they had a call from a company that claimed that given a few keywords, they could guarantee to get them at the top of Google’s search results.
Hmmm, interesting!
When I told my pals that I doubted the credibility of such a claim [I got starry-eyed stares when I tried to explain to them the why of this], I thought I’d best have a look at what this company was offering.
In a nutshell, this company has got a Google AdWords account, and in using it, they will, for a few pounds, place you at the top of a Google search – you know, in those ‘Sponsored Link’ bits.
Ok, so what’s the problem with that?
1.
Well they’re charging £20 per month – which is just enough to have most people say ‘well it’s not that much’ [and sign-up], yet either over or under what placing a top-result will actually cost you.
If you don’t know, Google ads ‘pay’ [Google] and ‘cost’ [you] whenever someone clicks them. How much? It depends upon a figure that you’ll have to agree with Google [it depends upon other bidders], and that fits within your budget – so here we’re talking about £20 per month apparently.
So what if you spend all your budget? Well, you disappear from the results … rather, you slide to the place where Google’s PageRank algorithm would normally place you [which may be nowhere of course!]
So this company hopes that to place you will cost maybe a penny per click, and that for your 20 quid they’ll have some left over at the end of the month to pocket for themselves [that’s 2,000 people clicking through - so they probably will!]. But what if you go ‘over budget’? Well, I assume they’ll either get you to stump up a bit more, or simply hope that you don’t notice your sudden disappearing act!
2.
Who clicks ads?
Well, there must be a lot of people that do, because that’s Google main source of revenue I believe!
Personally however, I rarely click them – for one thing, they’re mostly sat off to the right-hand side of the search results, so I don’t see them [I assume that the best payers are the ones that appear at the top of the search results – rather than towards the right-hand side].
But the main reason I don’t click them is because Google’s PageRank works very well, i.e., websites that rank highly via PageRank are normally worth looking at – as they’re effectively being voted for by others that link to them [see the link I just used above - well, according to Google, I've just voted for the webpage that explains PageRank]. However, is that true when someone pays to get themselves at the top of the results? Probably not! After all, if they were actually first-rate – worth looking at – wouldn’t they get there by themselves – through their own merit, osmosis – call it what you will? I think so.
The result is that the more savvy person will often not rate/trust a paid-for link – or at least not as much as one that makes it to the top through its own merit.
3.
Who will see the advert/link?
Well, maybe lots of people/maybe no one:
You’ll see it if:
- the paying customer’s monthly budget hasn’t been used up when you conduct your search;
- IF – and only if – you use Google!
Yup – no one will see it it they don’t use Google – perhaps they use Yahoo, or some other search-engine [Ask.com, A9.com, Live.com, …] – no-Google = no-Where to be seen.
on December 9th, 2009 at 10:48 am
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